Patients Question Hospital's Oversight

Friday March 2, 2001

Patients Question Hospital's Oversight

Garland, TX - April 28 - Garland Community Hospital stands accused of letting a spine doctor with a history of drug abuse perform hundreds of surgeries unsupervised.

As a result, some former patients say they've been crippled or paralyzed - and they lay part of the blame at the doors of a hospital that allowed Dr. Bruce Hinkley to operate.

Hospital officials say they acted promptly and appropriately.

Over the course of five years, Dr. Hinkley generated millions of dollars for the Garland hospital.

While many of Hinkley's former patients are satisfied, some say hospital officials were blinded by profits generated by a doctor with a dangerous past.

Hinkley's patients brought in more income for Garland Community Hospital than any other physician in 1995 and 1996, but some are asking the question: at what price?

"This man was producing a lot of income over the period of several years, average cost of $47,000 per surgery," said attorney Ted Lyons. "That gave them an economic incentive to turn their head when they knew that he was operating in a dangerous manner."

Hospital officials said Hinkley was recommended for privileges by an independent physicians' panel that "had no…financial stake in the hospital."

That panel presumably took into account a series of failed drug tests and run-ins with law in the 1980s.

Hinkley has had his privileges stripped at an Oklahoma hospital and was placed on restricted medical practice in Oklahoma and Texas.

During a videotaped deposition, Hinkley recounted how he would joke with patients about his past, telling them, "I might just decide to party the night before your surgery because it's life-long disease."

Former patient Linda Ish is not amused. She said she knew nothing about Hinkley's past.

In 1997, Hinkley performed a radical 360-degree spinal fusion on Ish, but the operation was not a success.

"I asked the nurse, "I feel like I'm in a hole. Why do I feel like I'm in a hole? Why do I feel like I'm in a hole?" because I couldn't feel nothing from the waist down. I was numb." Ish recalled.

She said all Hinkley told her was that a bone chip hit her nerve during surgery and that she would be fine.

Today, Ish is still paralyzed and is suing the hospital.

She walks with the help of a cane and finds it difficult to care for her two adopted children.

Ish also struggles to cope with the truth about what happened during her surgery.

By Hinkley's own admission, he missed four hours of the operation, sick and asleep on the gurney outside the operating room.

A nurse administered three bags of IV solution.

Hinkley said he was sick from food poisoning.

Mae Meador R.N., the chief nursing officer at the time, later testified that if she had seen Hinkley in that condition, she would have reported him. "I would have been out of there in a flash looking for the director of surgery."

No one in the operating theater suggested that the surgery should not continue, according to Linda Ish's lawyer Colleen Carboy. "Linda was never given the benefit of the question, 'Dr. Hinkley's sick, would you like to postpone your surgery?' Nobody told her," Carboy said. "As far as Linda knew, Dr. Hinkley was doing her surgery."

Instead, Dr. Robert Harper-an assistant with no lead surgical privileges-operated on Ish.

At one point, he drilled too deep, hitting a nerve root in the spine and causing permanent damage.

Ish said Hinkley never told her the truth. "I think he owed me to be honest with me if he had a problem he should have told me," Ish said.

According to state records, Hinkley tested positive for cocaine four times from January 1998 through June 1999.

The first two were later thrown out, but the last two resulted in suspension of Hinkley's license.

Garland Community Hospital declined to comment on-camera, citing patient confidentiality and pending litigation.

They did tell us in writing:

Dr. Hinkley passed a continuous series of drug tests over a nine-year period under…the State Board of Medical Examiners. When we became aware of Dr. Hinkley's failed drug test, his hospital practice was suspended immediately."

The hospital statement went on to say, "hospitals cannot bar a licensed physician from practicing medicine solely on a history of substance abuse."

A group of former patients - some of them partially paralyzed after Hinkley surgery - say the hospital should have done more.

"I feel like at that point they could had did something about it," Linda Ish said. "I might not be in the condition that I'm in now, for the rest of my life."

Garland Community Hospital is now suing Dr. Hinkley for non-payment of a $150,000 loan made to him after he was suspended.

Asked if they would ever allow Hinkley to practice there again, hospital CEO Gene Miller would only say that they "would do the right thing."

Hinkley is currently suspended from practice.

The State Board of Medical Examiners will decide to whether to give Hinkley his license back in the coming weeks.