Still no news

Silence follow reporters’ requests

By David Baker
Posted Tuesday, December 10, 2013
221 words

For the second time in two years a Times Union reporter has asked about a story on my web page.

And for the second time, apparently found nothing that the paper’s readers should know about.

The first time it happened was in 2011; Cathleen Crowley sent an e-mail asking about a lawsuit brought by the widow of Joseph Bartoski, who bled to death at Samaritan Hospital when, in separate incidents a few minutes apart, first a doctor and then a nurse gave him a dose of a blood thinner.  A second story on this page showed how the hospital contined to fight the lawsuit even after the doctor and the nurse had both admitted to state health department investigators that they had mistakenly administered the blood thinner.

The case was later settled just before trial for $350,000.

The second request came back in October; Robert Gavin asked for a copy of the initial document in a lawsuit that alleged Samaritan Hospital was negligent when it repeatedly granted privileges to Akiva Abraham, and that Abraham had performed an unnecessary procedure on a patient without her knowledge or consent that left her disfigured.

Both lawsuits were settled;  the negligent-credentialing claim case in 2012 after a 6-year legal battle.

In each case, documents about the case were e-mailed to the reporter. But despite Crowley’s inquiry, nothing was published about the Bartoski case.

And even after running a dozen stories over six years about Abraham’s many other problems, the Times Union has never published a word about the unusual claim of negligent credentialing filed against and ultimately settled by one of its biggest advertisers.
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The Bartoski case

The negligent-credentialing claim