Justice denied

Answers for Lisa:

 First the web page. Next: the book

The extraordinary story of one avoidable hospital death and

 the people who helped those responsible avoid accountability 

By David Baker

   This year it is two decades since my wife Lisa Baker’s totally avoidable death while she was in the care of Samaritan Hospital in Troy, N.Y. 

   For the hospital’s management, it was just another medical malpractice claim for its attorneys to fight. Then it was over. The hospital took the $73,000 it was paid to treat Lisa in its ICU for the ultimately fatal injuries she had received at its hands and moved on; another plaintiff  beaten off by an army of lawyers funded by an immensely wealthy insurance company.

   While nothing can bring back a person whose life is taken by a hospital’s negligence, when it happens most family members want two things; first, a full explanation of what happened

   And second, an assurance that it will never happen again.

   But in Lisa’s case no credible explanation has ever been offered. Rather, the hospital repeatedly claimed that even some entries in its own records were wrong, such as Lisa’s almost non-existent glucose level when she was found in her hospital bed near death. 

   And as for never happening again: Just five months after Lisa died, another Samaritan patient, Alec MacKenzie - who also had diabetes - died after once again nurses ignored a physician’s specific order that they follow the  hospital’s written instructions if MacKenzie’s blood glucose level dropped.

   But with no acknowledgement that the hospital staff had caused a patient to lose her life - and, therefore, no assurance that steps would be taken to prevent it happening again - there has been no moving on for me.  Add to that the extraordinary events surrounding the legal claim against those responsible for Lisa’s safety and the matter is still open, as painful now as it was in 2003.

   So the law didn’t hold them accountable. But I can - with an almost permanent account of what happened. 

   I am writing a book.

   Sites on the internet can disappear. But paper books are distributed to and can remain in homes, libraries and on-line book stores for decades. (All four of my mother’s books can still be purchased, via the internet, more than 60 years after the first one was published.) 

   Here then is a summery of the main players in the saga that is Lisa Zenzen Baker vs Samaritan Hospital -  that also led to the publication on my web page and this blog of stories about dozens of lawsuits filed against Capital Region medical providers that since 1998 the area’s media outlets have ignored to protect a steady stream of revenue from some of their biggest advertisers.

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Matthew Leinung. A doctor at Albany Medical Center Hospital who provided an affidavit in support of Samaritan Hospital’s motion for summary judgement dismissing the lawsuit, in which he stated that nurses who ignored a physician’s written order to follow the hospital’s printed protocol for treating hypoglycemia did not depart from the standard of care.  He also claimed to know, four years later, that Lisa’s blood-glucose level when she was found in her hospital near death was actually a safe 80 mg/dL - not the 2 mg/dL recorded in her medical chart.  This despite that fact that Lisa was immediately treated for low blood glucose, and that her death certificate listed as a cause of death, “profound hypoglycemia.” Leinung’s extraordinary paid opinion allowed the hospital to avoid any responsibility for Lisa’s totally avoidable and excruciatingly painful death. 

Cynthia LaFave.  Incompetent attorney who took on but later abandoned without notice Lisa’a wrongful death claim.

 

Stephen Coffey.  A lawyer at the Albany law firm O’Connell & Aronowitz who called and offered to consider taking over Lisa’s lawsuit from LaFave without disclosing that his firm was representing Samaritan Hospital, then embarked on a calculated effort to get the claim dismissed. He later wrote an angry response to my detailed letter describing his efforts to destroy the case as ”…an assault on me and my office.”  But his letter didn’t deny or even address the accusations against him. 

James K. Reed, M.D.  Former president and CEO of St. Peter’s Health Partners and before that CEO of Northeast Health prior to its merger with SPHP.  During his tenure hundreds of lawsuits alleging avoidable deaths and injuries were ignored by the Times Union while the newspaper ran a steady stream of ads for the healthcare companies. It was during Reed’s time in charge that, five months after Lisa Baker was fatally injured when nurses ignored a physician’s direct order to apply written  instructions for treating hypoglycemia that another patient with diabetes, Alec MacKenzie, died when nurses again ignored a physician’s order to use the instructions, revealing Reed’s callous disregard for the safety of patients in his hospital that bordered on the criminal. 

Akiva Abraham.  Former gynecologist, sued by a patient who made the unusual claim against Samaritan Hospital of ‘negligent credentialing’, alleging that the hospital granted and repeatedly renewed Abraham’s privileges despite overwhelming evidence that he was medically and morally unfit to practice.  The lawsuit, settled in 2012 after six years of litigation, alleged that Abraham performed an unnecessary procedure he was not authorized by the hospital to perform on the patient’s breast without her knowledge or consent that left her disfigured. The lawsuit was never reported by the Times Union, even as it published a dozen stories about Abraham’s arrest and conviction for insurance fraud stemming from an arson; his bankruptcy filing; and the revocation of his medical license.

Stephen Ferradino. State Supreme Court judge who made no effort to hide his basis against a self-represented litigant, refusing to order Samaritan Hospital’s attorneys to produce a highly relevant medical record that could have changed the outcome of the lawsuit that clearly was being withheld.  Self-represented, litigants  are usually afforded extra latitude but not in Ferradino’s court: During a conference in chambers and over my objection he gave the hospital’s attorneys far more time to respond to a motion than they had asked for, while, on another issue, strictly enforcing the rules on me.  Ferradino retired in June 2014 after 20 years as a state Supreme Court justice.  He died in July 2022.

Kathleen M. Ryan.  Attorney defending Samaritan Hospital. During a conference in the judge’s chambers, Ryan said her clients were prepared to settle the lawsuit. Before doing so, though, she said the insurance carrier wanted a “final review.”  But as later became apparent, that was a lie to buy time; the weeks-long delay was really so Ryan could continue looking for a doctor who would provide an affidavit in support of a motion for summary judgment dismissing the claim.  Evidently, none of those she had approached were prepared to say what Ryan wanted. Until Matthew Leinung of Albany Medical Center Hospital, disregarding the most basic care required for a patient with diabetes, agreed to make the outrageous claims described in the first item above.

George Randolph Hearst, lll, Publisher and CEO of the Albany Times Union, who raised millions of dollars for St. Peter’s Health Partners. He was then appointed to a seat on the hospital operator's governing board, which in 2011 named an addition to its main Albany hospital the Hearst Pavilion.

Rex Smith. Editor of the Times Union from 2002 to 2021, and before that managing editor, news, years during which the paper ignored dozens of medical-malpractice lawsuits against a hospital operator that ran a constant stream of ads in the paper.  Smith did not respond to requests for comment on this glaring abandonment of journalist ethics.

New York state Department of Health.  After a staff member initially said in a phone call responding to a letter describing what had happened to Lisa in the early hours of November 11, 2003 that there appeared to have been serious negligence, the agency later turned the file over to an outside organization for a review.  And apparently using only the medical chart - no interviews of those involved - the anonymous reviewer dismissed all the evidence of negligence in a single paragraph - a decision that shocked at least one staffer in the DoH office in Troy.  But the department was overruled; case closed.  And efforts to get more information on the outside organization’s stunning determination met a brick wall. Even Richard Gottfried, then chair of the state Assembly health committee, could get no answers.  And Kemp Hannon, then chair of the Senate’s health committee, didn’t even try.

So for Samaritan Hospital, no penalty, not even a slap on the wrist.

Five months after Lisa’s death, another patient died in Samaritan after documented negligence shockingly similar to that which had cost Lisa her life - making the state health department partly responsible for this second avoidable death.

Gloria Cooper. Trudy Lieberman. Greg Marx.  The emails tell the story.  In 2006, Cooper, then deputy executive director of the Columbia Journalism Review, respond to my correspondence by asking for and receiving extensive printed material from me documenting the absence of news in Albany media about lawsuits filed against medical facilities that were big advertisers  - and then, without explanation, abandoned the story.  Nine years later, Trudy Lieberman, a CJR contributor, also responded to my email, and did two brief telephone interviews with me and was given links to the dozens of stories about medical malpractice lawsuits by then on my web pages, but made excuses for three and a half years  - and never published a single word. Finally CJR staff writer Greg Marx suggested that a comparison with news coverage in other cities was relevant, rather than how the Albany media handles similar claims against advertisers and non-advertisers - such as jails. He, too, showed no further interest  - and CJR has never mentioned this wholesale suppression of news, the publication of which is clearly in the public interest.

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A publication date for my book will be announced here and posted on social media.