[The only thing more reprehensible than Kaiser’s failure to protect its patients from this known repeat malpractice offender, is its PRBS release defending its despicable actions. Kaiser Thrive Exposed joins Justen Deal in his demand for the resignation of The Permanente Medical Group CEO, and lead obfuscater, Dr. Robert Pearl. In the meantime, Kaiser CEO George Halvorson wants you to “be well and be green” (as in keep giving Kaiser your money for its repeated failure to provide the basic standard of medical care.)]
From the L.A. times:
Kaiser doctor, accused of negligence, remains on the job
“I’ve been telling these guys for years that he was going to kill someone,” said Dr. Gilbert Moran, the former ob-gyn chief. “And no one would listen.”
By Tracy Weber and Charles Ornstein, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
Late one April night, the first of Sarah Valenzuela’s twins arrived with little trouble, but the second stayed put.
Though the baby was not in distress, Kaiser Permanente perinatologist Hamid Safari attached a vacuum extractor to the boy’s head to draw him out. Again and again he tugged, but still the baby would not come.
He vigorously shook the vacuum, up and down, side to side, according to government documents and hospital incident reports.
It took 90 minutes and six tries — the last with Safari on his knees, pulling. Horrified staffers — and the boy’s father — looked on as baby Devin finally emerged. His skin was a bloodless white, his neck elongated and floppy.
His spinal cord had been severed.
Safari lashed out at a nurse. “What did you do to that baby? I gave you a good baby,” he said, according to a complaint letter the nurse sent to her union representative.
Staffers at the Fresno birthing center were devastated and angry — and not just because of the twin lost that night in 2005.
Over the years, doctors and nurses repeatedly had complained to higher-ups — including Kaiser’s top medical officer in Northern and Central California — about problems they saw in Safari’s skills and behavior, according to interviews and documents.
This is a story not just of tragic medical outcomes, but of a health plan that did not prevent them.
A year before Devin’s death, the doctor had waited more than three hours to do a Caesarean section even though the baby girl was in distress and her family said they had been pleading for the procedure, according to interviews and government records. She was severely deprived of oxygen and died months later.
As far back as 2002, a physician review committee at the hospital concluded that Safari provided “inappropriate” care and that his “conduct needed significant improvement,” according to a lawsuit later filed by two of his peers.
Still, the doctor continues to work at Kaiser Fresno, practicing under restrictions that staffers say have not been explained to patients.
Regulators acted only recently. This July, the state Department of Managed Health Care fined Kaiser a record $3 million for its haphazard handling of complaints and physician errors throughout the state. Officials said in an interview that the Safari matter played a significant role in their decision to investigate the HMO’s practices.
Late last month, the state medical board accused Safari of gross negligence, seeking to revoke or suspend his license.
The board also has faulted Kaiser, the nation’s largest HMO with 6.5 million members in California. The health plan made the board’s investigation of Safari “protracted and difficult” by providing incomplete medical records, a spokeswoman said.
Kaiser did not allow senior officials to be interviewed for this story — and warned staffers at Kaiser Fresno not to talk, several said. In a statement, hospital administrator Susan Ryan said the HMO has cooperated with the medical board and is “committed to ensuring the safety of our patients.”
In July 2005 — three months after Devin’s death — Kaiser imposed its restrictions on Safari, barring him from performing vaginal deliveries and requiring him to be monitored by another physician or an advanced-practice nurse, Ryan said. The restrictions became permanent in April 2007. Kaiser and other hospitals typically do not notify patients of such actions, officials said.
Safari, 49, declined to comment. His lawyer, Stephen D. Schear, said the accusations are “completely unwarranted” and that Safari intends to challenge the medical board’s action in a hearing. Safari, he said, has the support of many at the hospital and in his department.
“If you’re doing thousands of high-risk deliveries over the years, it’s almost inevitable that there’s going to be some unfortunate cases where children die, where things don’t go right,” Schear said.
“You’re talking about one minute maybe where he pulled too hard to try to extract this baby. . . . Just look at his whole record, 10 years.”
But doctors and other staffers allege that Devin’s death was the culmination of Safari’s troubles, not a fluke.
“We do not feel that our perinatologist is competent,” reads an August 2005 petition signed by eight of Safari’s peers, about half of the ob-gyn department. “Over and over again he put our patients at risks and most recently with the undeniably terrible outcome.”
Kaiser was “misleading our patients and the public” by advertising that it had a perinatalogist on staff even though his practice was restricted, said the petition, which was addressed to the hospital’s medical director.
The petition, complaint letters, depositions and other documents used in preparation of this story are part of the ongoing lawsuit by the two doctors and arbitration cases against Kaiser, or have been provided to state regulators investigating Kaiser and Safari.
Dr. Gilbert Moran, one of the doctors who sued Kaiser and its affiliated Permanente Medical Group, alleges that they punished him and others who complained, rather than address their legitimate concerns.
“I’ve been telling these guys for years that he was going to kill someone,” said Moran, the former ob-gyn chief. “And no one would listen.”
Misjudgments, mistakes
In 1997, Kaiser’s Fresno hospital needed more obstetricians but was having difficulty finding specialists willing to live and work in the Central Valley.
A staff physician recommended Safari, a former classmate from the Tehran University Faculty of Medicine in Iran, who had just completed a fellowship in perinatology at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center. That training qualified him to treat high-risk pregnant women.
Without its own perinatologist, Kaiser had been forced to send such women to outside doctors and hospitals, often at enormous cost.
Safari arrived that August. Within months, staff members began to file complaints to Moran, alleging that Safari was rude and inappropriate.
“Dr. Safari let everybody know in no uncertain terms that since he was hired as the perinatologist that his intelligence level exceeded everybody’s,” said a nurse who, like several other staffers, insisted on anonymity because she feared for her job.
As time went by, staffers allege, they began to notice that the specialist also was making misjudgments and mistakes.
But Safari resisted criticism, they said. After the ob-gyn department’s quality committee ordered him to work on his deficiencies in 2002, Safari “adamantly refused to follow the committee’s plan, stating that general OBGYN’s cannot tell a specialist, perinatologist, what to do,” according to a pending lawsuit filed in May by Moran and a colleague, Dr. Robert Rusche.
The suit does not name Safari as a defendant but seeks damages from Kaiser and the Permanente Medical Group, alleging the HMO retaliated against them for drawing attention to Safari. In court papers, the defendants have denied the allegations.
The hospital called in Kaiser’s regional chief of perinatology, who reviewed Safari’s charts and sided with the committee, the suit said.
One of the cases involved a woman with possible pre-eclampsia — characterized by high blood pressure and swelling that can lead to serious complications, according to Schear, Safari’s attorney. A review by physician peers found that she should have been hospitalized, he said. In a second case, they cited Safari’s failure to detect a potentially risky condition in which twins had markedly different weights, he said.
The review process was driven by Safari’s enemies, principally Moran, and the cases cited did not involve harm to patients, Schear said. Even so, Safari followed the committee’s instructions, he said.
“Peer review can be used in an unfair way to go after a doctor that people want to go after,” he said. “No doctor is perfect.”
Some of Safari’s colleagues agreed.
“Dr. Safari has been scrutinized way beyond what a person in similar circumstances would have happen to them,” said Dr. Thomas Kulterman, a Safari supporter.
Moran said Safari’s performance made him a target, and it did not improve with time or scrutiny.
Repeatedly during 2002 and 2003, Moran and Rusche complained to Dr. Varoujan Altebarmakian, the hospital’s chief physician, and others that Safari’s “unsafe” treatment of patients “clearly fell below any accepted standard of care,” according to the doctors’ lawsuit.
Altebarmakian told them the situation “would be taken care of,” the suit said.
Little need to question
Tanella Bessard knew nothing about Safari when she first saw him in October 2003.
She had grown up under the HMO’s care. Her children were born at Kaiser hospitals, the second with a congenital heart defect. So when Bessard became pregnant with her third child, she heeded her Kaiser doctor’sadvice to consult Safari, the hospital’s sole perinatalogist.
In mid-January, when she was about 32 weeks pregnant, Bessard was hospitalized for early contractions. Safari ordered shots to halt the labor and other steroid injections to develop her baby’s lungs, then allowed her to return to work, she said.
“I didn’t have a lot of reason to question him,” said Bessard, now 33. “He seemed to stay in tune with me and what my concerns were.”
On Jan. 28, when the baby was several weeks shy of full term, Bessard’s contractions became unstoppable, according to interviews and deposition transcripts. She was admitted to the hospital, and by 10 p.m. Safari noted drops in the baby’s heart rate after the contractions peaked. Such “late decelerations” can signal a reduced oxygen supply to the baby and, if prolonged, can cause critical harm.
Bessard’s mother, Lanell Brown, said she was watching the fluctuating lines on the fetal monitor with growing concern. She and Bessard pushed Safari to do a Caesarean section, but he resisted, they alleged.
Bessard’s baby, Paris, ultimately was delivered by C-section just past 1 a.m. — more than three hours after the late decelerations began. By that time, the pH of Paris’ umbilical cord — an indicator of a baby’s oxygen level before birth — was 6.8.
This level is “almost incompatible with life, it is so bad,” said Dr. Khalil Tabsh, chief of obstetrics at UCLA’s medical school, who spoke generally and did not review Bessard’s records. “Babies that are born with 6.8, they either are dead or they are in deep trouble.”
In her first months, Paris required oxygen and had seizures. “She didn’t do the normal things that children would do at her age,” Brown said. Paris died that November, not yet 10 months old.
The county coroner attributed her death to chronic bronchitis and bronchiolitis — respiratory diseases — but did not address whether it was related to birth trauma.
Bessard filed an arbitration claim, which Kaiser settled for an undisclosed amount. The HMO requires arbitration in legal disputes, a mandate that keeps all legal filings and their resolution confidential and out of public view.
In a deposition reviewed by The Times, Safari testified that it was Bessard who resisted his recommendation for a C-section.
“He changed everything around,” she said in an interview, “which really blew me out of the water.”
A financial settlement with Kaiser, reached in October 2005, gave Bessard little solace, she said. That’s why she asked her lawyer to refer her allegations to the state medical board.
Nearly two years later, when the board accused Safari of gross negligence, it cited his failure to do an “immediate Caesarean section.” Instead, officials said, he waited more than two hours to call for one and then took “some 50 minutes to deliver the infant.”
Another warning
About the time of the Bessard birth, tensions within the birthing center were escalating, according to memos and interviews.
In early 2004, Safari’s “behavior became irrational and included threatening to starve himself, light himself on fire, and to call CNN to witness his plight,” said Moran’s suit, which refers to Safari as “Dr. X.”
Schear, Safari’s attorney, said his client never said he would burn himself, but did threaten to go on a hunger strike to protest harassment by his boss, Moran. Other physicians complained that Moran played favorites, he said.
In May 2004, medical director Altebarmakian removed Moran as ob-gyn chief, citing his arrogance and his department’s dysfunction in a follow-up letter. At the time of his removal, Moran contends in his suit, he warned Altebarmakian that if something wasn’t done, Safari “would again permanently harm one of Kaiser’s patients.”
In December of that year, Moran had his meeting with Dr. Robbie Pearl, Permanente’s top physician for Northern and Central California, to discuss Moran’s concerns about Altebarmakian. According to his notes made at the time, Moran said he warned Pearl about Safari, and Pearl said he was “well aware” of the situation, including Safari’s threats to harm himself.
Devin, the twin boy, died in the delivery room four months later, and the case is now key to the medical board’s complaint against Safari.
Tabsh, UCLA’s obstetric chief, said that in his 35 years of practice he’d never heard of a full-term baby’s spinal cord being severed during a vacuum procedure.
“Everybody that was involved in it was literally sick,” said one nurse, who also spoke on condition of anonymity. “She was begging for a C-section.”
Another nurse, the one allegedly blamed by Safari for Devin’s death, questioned why no one had investigated whether Safari was threatening his colleagues. In her July 2005 letter of concern given to her union representative, she described him as repeatedly “harassing” her about the event.
“Those of us who did the right thing and came forward to speak up against Dr. Safari when he was in the wrong feel very threatened,” the veteran nurse wrote.
Schear said Safari threatened no one and had safely performed about 200 vacuum deliveries.
“It stinks. It just stinks. You’re looking at one minute of this guy’s career and you’re going to cream him. It’s very dramatic-sounding, ‘Oh, the poor baby broke his neck.’ It’s not something where you want to destroy a good and excellent perinatalogist’s reputation.”
Today, Valenzuela and her husband, Randy Ramirez, both 37, decline to say much about what happened. Valenzuela said she can’t discuss her arbitration settlement, and that they are afraid talking about Devin will make life unbearable again.
“Words can’t even describe it,” Ramirez said.
Sarah’s sister, Helen Valenzuela, recalled that Sarah “cried for a year” after Devin’s death.
Helen still remembers a nurse emerging from the delivery room, crying. Later, she said, she confronted Safari in the hallway: “You murdered my nephew!”
“He told me to ‘Calm down, or we’re going to have you removed,’ ” she said.
Near dawn, hours after Devin’s death, Helen said she was in the room when Safari sat on the side of Sarah’s bed and unburdened himself.
” ‘Nothing like this has ever happened to me before,’ ” she recalled him saying.
Futile to complain
As staffers traded details about the case, Moran and Rusche recall wondering why it hadn’t been promptly discussed by the hospital’s ob-gyn quality review committee — a practice they called routine in serious cases.
The doctors separately looked at Valenzuela’s medical records and Rusche brought his concerns to his supervisors.
In July, hospital officials took action by limiting Safari’s scope of practice. But they also took aim at the messengers, Moran and Rusche, for violating patient privacy restrictions by reviewing the records.
Moran was suspended for two weeks without pay, had his salary cut by $20,000 a year and was denied a year-end bonus, while Rusche was suspended for one week without pay and denied a bonus, according to their disciplinary letters.
Both men challenged the discipline but got nowhere, their suit alleges. It was their right to view the records, they contend, as quality committee members. And Moran said he had treated Valenzuela after her delivery.
In the months that followed, the hospital administration chastised the eight obstetricians who submitted the petition warning administrators about Safari in August 2005.In a staff memo, Altebarmakian wrote that a petition “targeting an individual practitioner is counterproductive and discourages the cooperative, harmonious and respectful work environment that the medical group expects and encourages.”
Several staffers began to sense that it was futile — not to mention risky — to complain.
“It looks like nothing changes,” said one veteran nurse. “I don’t know who protected him. I don’t know who came to bat for him. But he’s still there.”
Rusche recalls the moment he decided he’d had enough. A new patient had come in, and Rusche deemed her high-risk — a decision that ensured she would be sent to Safari.
“To me, I had crossed the line there,” he said. “It all of a sudden hit me what the heck I had just done.”
In January 2006, he and Moran gave up on resolving matters internally. They took their complaints to the medical board, just as Bessard’s lawyer had done earlier.
Rusche retired last year and has traveled the country in a motor home.
Moran now works for Kaiser in Bakersfield, 100 miles from his home, and sees his family on his days off.
Safari is a “really good physician” with a lengthy track record of doing “very difficult deliveries,” said Dr. Daryoush Razi, a fellow student from the Tehran medical school who now heads the ob-gyn department’s quality committee. “I trust him with treating my family.”
Earlier this year, he and 10 other doctors signed a letter of support for Safari. Several were new to the department, but three had apparently changed their minds after signing the protest petition in 2005.
He is “an asset to our department,” the letter said.
charles.ornstein@latimes.com
tracy.weber@latimes.com
Tragic, tragic, tragic. Isn’t it ironic that the mere mention of kaiser Permanente and reading about the horrific stories in the media would make one physically ill?
This is supposed to be an organization that saves lives, that cares about our health and our loved ones health but instead just the mention of the name kaiser becomes toxic. Kaiser is incredibly, incredibly toxic. I hope, NOW, the state and national regulators will see that this is real. Kaiser is a danger to peoples lives and health. They are literally, murdering people.
It is so incredibly tragic and sad that innocent Babies, Mothers, Fathers, Daughters, Sons, Sisters, Brothers, Aunts, Uncles, Grandmas, Grandpas and Friends are so deeply affected for the rest of their lives simply because they innocently trusted that kaiser was looking out for their best interests when in fact it was the complete opposite. This is evil, up close and personal. I don’t understand how people who defend such evil and cover for such evil can ever get a good nights sleep.
Well, I think this pretty much says it all about kaiser; Negligence, repeat offenders and coverups. It is pretty apparent that there is not one system in place at kaiser that is truly genuinely concerned about the health and welfare of it’s members. I hope that this FINALLY opens eyes that have been closed for a long time.
And George, who gives a crap about your phoney campaign to go green (because we all know that that is just a publicity stunt to make kaiser look good, another attempt to fool the public). Sounds like George has bigger fish to fry, namely himself.
You have to lower your head, and thank God this wasn’t your family. That must sound so cold, but I can’t even begin to imagine the horror these people have had to live through. I sincerely am not sure where these families find the strength to continue living, knowing that their child was killed by bureaucratic negligence.
This Dr. Pearl — my God. How can he go to work and call himself a “healer”? He’s no “healer”. He’s a destroyer of lives.
When I heard about this latest scandal and cover up I was horrified and I am embarrased to say I work for this oragnization. What I hope people will understand is that there are plenty of us who do work for Kaiser that do our best for our patients and care deeply. We are the ones who write the incident reports and pray we keep our jobs and are not let go for discussing company business. This one just got to me hence my reponse here tonight. I wish I could quit and go somewhere else but at my age it would be too hard and I would like to be able to retire someday. Bless the poor family that this happened to and I pray that this MD will find himself escorted out someday soon!
I have worked for outside kaiser health plans and also for kaiser system. I have to say that the care that is provided is exceptional. kaiser provides care to millions and there are thousands of physicians that work for the system. it is logical to have bad physicians and or bad outcomes. But in general the providers are much more competent than private pracitce.
I am pretty sure this will not be published since it is supporting kaiser, but it is worth the try.
regards
The current Kaiser provider is right – even the best sometimes fail. But you cannot call yourself the best when you lie and try to cover up things like this. The Kaiser response says they ‘reported’ this doctor to the medical board – a lie. TWO KAISER PHYSICIANS reported this monster to the medical board – after Kaiser would do nothing about him – and they were both punished by Kaiser for doing so with pay cuts and suspensions – and Kaiser admits as much.
Kaiser was the best once – but you cannot call yourself ‘the best’ when people keep dying like this. THIS ‘DOCTOR’ SNAPPED THE SPINE OF THAT BABY. AND YOU CALL THAT CARE ‘EXCEPTIONAL’????
Jesus.
To current kaiser provider, i’ve got to give you credit for being brave enough to comment in support of kaiser. I think you are in serious denial though. I’ve had care for most of my life outside of the kaiser system. Never had a problem. The minute I stepped foot in kaiser I new it wasn’t right. I understand that there are good people at kaiser. Those are the ones who have been deceived. How can things work properly if everyone is moving in different directions for different reasons? If the main motivation is to withold care then how can the good ones possibly prevail by doing the right thing? The organization’s motivation is completely stacked against the good guys. The good people at kaiser don’t stand a chance to do the right thing because at kaiser, it simply is not allowed. Then, it becomes a matter of guilt by association. Sure, everybody has to make a living but there is also something called “conscience.” What is the point of making a living if you have to do it with a dirty conscience? That’s not “living.”
California should be made aware of or reminded of this…
http://www.businessweek.com/1997/16/b352360.htm
Looks like Texas caught on pretty quickly.
I don’t understand what is taking so long for California.
I don’t want to repeat myself, so I’ll quote one of my recent comments from another post:
The problem is the corrupt corporate culture, not a lack of good providers. Every time there is a scandal the only people who are fired are those who have tried to advocate for the patients. Doesn’t seem very “committed to ensuring the safety of our patients” to me, and having been through the “Kaiser Treatment” myself there is nothing any Kaiser employee could say that would make me disbelieve my own experiences.
Sorry, but the gap between what Kaiser says and what they do is so big you could drive a truck through it.
They don’t call it Kaiserfornia for nothing!
Good ol’ Kaiserfornia. So glad people are so caring and concerned
about the health and welfare of it’s insurance premium, tax paying citizens.
Give us your dollars, we give you death in return.
Glad to see that our lives are valued so greatly. You can see the sincerity of the dollar signs reflected in their eyes.
Ain’t that right Mr. Kaiserforniaschwartzenegar
I am a former patient of Dr. Safari and he delivered my child in 1998. I was a high risk pregnancy and I received wonderful care from him. I felt he did a wonderful job during my pregnancy and the birth. I don’t know what to feel about these allegations. They sure don’t fit the doctor I had during that time. I am so thankful I had no troubles. While I can say I thought he was wonderful, now reading this, if I were pregnant now, I would change physicians immediately, even though I had great treatment before. This was very scary to read. I feel terrible for the families, no matter what happened. The loss they have had is immeasureable. If Kaiser felt the need to impose these restrictions, that he cannot deliver babies, then they should remove him from patient care. I feel Kaiser has done a disservice to their insured. I loved Dr. Safari, but if this is all true, he should not have a license.
This article Opened up my Eyes about Dr. Safari. I feel like Kaiser has Decieved there patients about not being so open about Dr. Safari’s practice and Kaiser should of put Dr. Safari on leave until this matter was straightened out. He really shouldn’t be practicing medicine when those mother’s lost there baby in the delievery room. They should suspend his license and we as Kaiser Members should take a stand and let Kaiser know we Won’t Tolerate this Matter and Dr. Safari should be Delt with in a serious matter. And personally I feel like he should get some help. And I am not saying this to destroy his career but to re think his professionalism and to put the patient in High Regards.
I feel very shocked in Dismayed over the Fresno Bee Article and that I could hardly believe what I was reading. Why aren’t they putting him on Administrative Leave? As a parent you can never replace a life, mine or my child’s life. And he took away those parents dreams of there new born baby coming home to them and took away there dreams of watching them grow up.
And it wasn’t just Dr. Safari that took away those dreams of watching their child grow up, it was KAISER that took away those dreams. Kaiser silenced my Baby before she could ever even be born. She was a BEAUTY and kaiser took her away
before we even had a chance to say hello to each other. Had we been given a NECESSARY C-section I believe my Baby Lehna would be alive today.
Unfortunately, Dr. Safari was not an isolated incident.
KAISER is really the issue here.
To me it is pretty simple–Kaiser’s motivation is to withhold care, in order to minimize costs, and so anyone who needs help is, by default, in an adversarial relationship with their provider, as opposed to a collaborative one.
If you want to get decent coverage avoid Kaiser. Period.
Sadly as a non-resident I did not know about them until, for me, it was too late. But that is their business model and all you can really do is just stop using them. If enough people simply quit paying monthly premiums THEN things MAY change. In my opinion, there is no other way to impact them other than a large scale exodus.
I hear that the infamous Dr. Safari has been “suspended” from duties after the outry from the public,other KP providers and the nurses union. Now the medical board just needs to take away his license.
Its about time Kaiser does something about this situation with Dr. Safari. He really shouldn’t be practicing medicine with all of these allegations against him. Thank-Goodness for the patients that called Member Services and Complained about Dr. Safari and we were willing to change OB’s because of the Allegations against him from the Article of the LA Times. I believe the Patients Voices has been heard and Horray for the Nurses Union who took a stand against Dr. Safari!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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My OB Gyn. was Dr. Moran, but it was Dr. Safari delivered my daughter by emergency c-section, in 1999.
I know now that WE both were lucky to make it out alive!
I was diagnosed with a Placenta Previa, and knew that a c-section was in my future. But after being doped up with medicine to stop my pre-term contractions, I was sent home. Moran was worried about maintaining my pregnancy, but Safari said my c-section should not be done until I had 3 bleeding episodes…well, I did, and it wasn’t until I almost bled out, that Safari performed my c-section.
Actually, Moran was supposed to do the surgery, but Safari started it before Moran even arrived. I could sense the tension in the operating room, and to call him errogant would be quite an understatement. I didn’t feel comfortable with him delivering my baby, but I didn’t feel I was in the position to do anything about it. I kept quiet and tried to focus on staying calm.
During her week-long stay, my daughter got outstanding care from the nurses in the NICU, and for that I am truly grateful. I was extremely weak, and my RBC count was “in the basement”, but I stayed as strong as I could.
But Dr. Safari clearly put my health and my daughter’s at risk.
I wish I knew then, what I know now… I would not have had my baby at Kaiser. Kaiser should never have put a child’s life in the hands of such an arrogant, doctor – especially one that completely lacks the moral code that he took an oath to uphold.
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I don’t know what I should say about the care at Kaiser,except dissapointed.
I was diagnose as having hypertyroidism 3 years ago, was undergoing unsuccessful treatment with propanolo for a year and a half, then refer to a pysch doc, insteas of just admitting to not being able to stablize me they saidit was a mental health issue. They psych doctor gave me medication that I was allergic to, conflicted with my thyroid medication, send me to emergency room, and was quite upset when I request to be transfer to another doctor…took her almost 4 months just to refer me…I think it’s her that needs to see a psych…
We, too have very bad experiences with Kaiser Doctors.
DR.ELISA MELANIE LUTZER-Oakland Kaiser Permanente-. This is one of the worst doctors I have seen in my lifetime. She is so incompetent that you don’t know if she is coming or going. She has given my daughter different kinds of diagnosis and medications so much so that we have completely lost confidence with this doctor. At one point, we decided to take my daughter to another doctor for a second opinion. She obstructed us, the parents, to do just that.We told her that we have a POWER OF ATTORNEY to take care of our daughter as we see fit and yet they chose to ignore it. She together with another incompetent Case Coordinator by the name of JETH GOLD, at first threatened to call the Police if we don’t follow their orders, then as I was talking to this SHREW on the phone, the other was calling the Police on the other line, who came knocking at my door. When I explained to the COPS that this doctor has done nothing but DOPE UP my daughter (probably to gain more brownie points with the pharmaceutical companies so that she can get free travel benefits from them under the guise of training and symposia) and that Kaiser doctors are NO GOOD, he commented that he definitely agree with me on that point; they left me alone. STAY AS FAR AWAY FROM THESE INDIVIDUALS AS YOU CAN. AND GET OUT OF KAISER AS SOON AS YOU CAN. Ricky L.