ER staff sued

 Alleged spinal injury brings lawsuit

 against Samaritan Hospital

By David Baker

Posted June 5, 2023  

   A Rensselaer County man who went to the emergency room at Samaritan Hospital in Troy, N.Y. with stomach pain and vomiting has filed a lawsuit alleging that he was damaged when a tube that was passed through his nose into his stomach allegedly causing spinal fluid and air to enter his brain.

   The patient, William Kramek, was then transferred by ambulance to Albany Medical Center Hospital, where a patch was placed to stop the leak of spinal fluid.

   The complaint says that “..as a result of defendants’ negligence, Plaintiff was cause direct trauma from insertion of the nasogastric tube resulting in him becoming diaphoretic [sweating excessively], eyelids dropping, seizure activity and leaking cerebral spinal fluid through his nose.”

   The complaint names Samaritan Hospital, St. Peter’s Health Partners - and 10 entities that provide physicians under contract to work in emergency rooms, some of the entities apparently owned by the hospital operator itself.

   The lawsuit was filed on May 31, 2022 but is now on hold  after one of the contracted entities, Envision Healthcare Corporation, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in May, reportedly owing $7.7 billion to dozens of other organizations. 

   The filling comes five years after Envision was taken private by the private equity group KKR in a deal valued at $10 billion.

   In addition to Envision Healthcare Corporation the complaint lists as defendants two other entities that appear to be associated with and perhaps owned by Envision Healthcare and share the same Florida address: Envision Physician Services, LLC; and Emergency Medical Association of New York P.C. 

   Another two entities under contract with the hospital, Emergency Medical Associates and Emergency Medical Associations PLLC, share an address in Parsippany, N.J. One of them appears to have been set up by a doctor, Stanley W. Docyk of Ballston Spa, N.Y., which then contracted to provide Docyk’s, services to the hospital.

  Four of the 10 corporations are apparently owned and operated by St. Peter’s Health Partners: St. Peter’s Health Partners Medical Associates; St. Peter’s Health Partners Emergency Associates; and Manning Emergency Medical Associates all list 315 S. Manning Boulevard in Albany - the address of St. Peter’s Hospital - as their address. Another defendant, Emergency Medicine Physicians of Samaritan, PLLC, lists 2215 Burdett Ave. in Troy - Samaritan Hospital’s location - as its address.

   Press reports on Envision’s bankruptcy filing suggest passage in 2020 of the federal No Surprises Act impacted Envisions’s revenues. The act restricts how doctors who work in a hospital but are employed by an agency can bill patients whose insurance was not accepted by the outside physicians. Before the passage of the act patients who often had no idea that the doctor treating them was not an employee of the hospital and did not accept their insurance were getting billed for thousands of dollars - and getting sued when they were unable or unwilling to pay the surprise bill.

   The lawsuit, which also name Kramek’s wife Anne as a plaintiff,  was filed by the Troy law firm E. Stewart Jones Hacker Murphy. 

  Representing Samaritan Hospital, St. Peter’s Health Partners and St. Peters’ Health Partners Medical Associates is  the Albany firm Thorn, Gershon Tymann & Bonanni. 

   Manning Emergency Medical Associates PLLC, Envision Healthcare Corporation , Envision Physician Services LLC, and Emergency Medial Association of New York are represented by O’Connor, O’Connor, Breese & First of Albany.

   A check of the Albany Timers Union archives produced no story about the Kramer lawsuit. As has been reported on this page, TU publisher George Randolph Hearst III has a seat on the St. Peter’s Health Partners’s board and has raised millions of dollars for the company. 

   Over past 26 years the paper has ignored dozens of lawsuits alleging wrongful death and serious injury filed against hospitals and other facilities now operated by St. Peters Health Partners.

****

George Randolph Hearst: Opinion: A duty abandoned.