Sometimes hell have bedtime stories and try to be as normal as possible.". If the board decides to act on a complaintand only one in four complaints makes it that farinvestigators begin subpoenaing hospital records, which the board will eventually send to a pair of volunteer doctors in the same specialty who will review the case (if they disagree, a third doctor has to be found to break the tie). His father was a missionary and physical therapist and his mother was a school teacher. by Saul Elbein. Here's All That Happened to the Real Christopher Duntsch, The Best Peacock Shows to Start Streaming Now, Leann Rimes Shares Video Montage for Anniversary. Henderson says that Duntsch told the Dallas Medical Center administration about the Martin and Summers cases, but explained that the outcomes hadnt been his fault: Summers, he said, had been paralyzed by a bad drug interaction, and Martin had died because of complications from anesthesia. Mr. Kimberly Morgan is the former assistant and ex-girlfriend of Christopher Duntsch, nicknamed Dr Death. Though a hospital peer review took this doctors privileges in 2006, he continued to practice for three more years until he retired, according to federal records. He had amputated a nerve root, Henderson said. The point isnt that all doctors are dangerous, or even that any more than a tiny minority are. Duntschs license is currently on temporary suspension pending further action by the board. But Baylor didnt hold him to that. Even the fact that the board is conducting an investigation remains confidential until the investigation is over. Elena Nicolaou is the former culture editor at Oprah Daily. The board cant revoke a license without overwhelming evidence, and investigations can take months, with months or years of costly hearings dragging on afterward. He didnt tell them about Baylors internal reports that faulted him in both cases, according to Henderson. Those are the words that Dr. Christopher Duntsch, a Dallas neurosurgeon, wrote to his girlfriend in 2011 in the midst of a two-year period that left 33 of his 38 patients maimed, wounded or . Until the day of the suspension, if you had looked Duntsch up on the Texas Medical Board website, you would have found him a physician in good standing. Of that set, two died and 31 were paralyzed or seriously injured. (And the National Practitioner Databank doesnt make doctors names public, so we dont know who they are.) This will not bring my mother back, but it is some sense of justice for the all the families, for all of the victims.. Christopher Duntsch, who once claimed to be a mixture of "God, Einstein and the Antichrist," injured or killed 33 of his 38 patients in less than two years, according to prosecutors. A Texas neurosurgeon accused of intentionally botching multiple spinal surgeries, resulting in the death of two . ), Photo: According to ProPublica, most neurosurgery residents perform 1,000 operations; Duntsch completed 100. The True Story Behind Peacock's 'Dr. Death' | Time But the real tragedy of the Christopher Duntsch story is how preventable it was. Unfortunately, sometimes it takes longer than we want., What Henderson took from this, he told me, is that were dealing with people who dont do the job they are hired to do.. Ellisontold thepodcast that Morgan was instantly smitten with the doctor. Do you think free access to journalism like this is important? When physical therapy didnt relieve the pain, her family doctor suggested she see a certain neurosurgeonbut the doctor couldnt find that surgeons card, so she suggested Duntsch instead. He went to the operating room and asked to speak to the doctor. You know, hell call and say goodnight to his boys, um, sometimes hell have bedtime stories and try to be as normal as possible.. Another suffered a sliced vertebral artery which led to a stroke and later death. He had a slick marketing team in Best Docs Network, a physician PR company that pumps out infomercials to local TV stations. Some drag on for years. They all have blood on their hands.. Forty-five minutes passed, then an hour, two hours, with no word. Those were the words that Christopher Duntsch never wanted to hear. None of this hurt his career. Over the next year, the Medical Board would receive at least six more complaints from doctors who had seen Duntschs work up close. The relationship between Duntsch and Morgan would come to an end after he leftBaylor Medical Center in Planoamidst criticism that he had botched multiple surgeries, including one that left a patient dead. So while hospital administrators did a deeper background examination, they granted Duntsch temporary privileges. Young is portrayed in the dramatized series by actress Molly Griggs, who brings to life the couples volatile arguments, including onedepiction in whichYoung announcesshe is pregnant just months into their relationship to a less-than-thrilled Duntsch, played by former Dawsons Creek star Joshua Jackson. At the end of May 2013, Kirby and Henderson received invitations to a celebratory dinner, courtesy of University General Hospital, to meet their new neurosurgeon, Dr. Christopher Duntsch, at an expensive uptown restaurant. He was smart. In June 2010, following the media circus around the prosecution of the Kermit nurses, they filed a complaint against him. Theres no reason to assume another doctor would have advised her differently. While that complaint worked its way through the system, another of his patients died of a hydrocodone overdose. As D Magazine put it, "His outcomes were so poor, so beyond the accepted standard of care, that a grand jury indicted him on five counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon as well as a single count of harming an elderly patient." That complaint was filedalong with the 6,000 to 8,000 other complaints the Medical Board receives each year, in addition to the thousands of licensure applications the agencys 156 employees must review. Because he owed people a lot of money. He felt confident. After Christopher performed a spinal surgery on Mary in 2012, Mary suffered crippling pain afterward. Dr. Christopher Duntschs patients ended up maimed and dead, but the real tragedy is that the Texas Medical Board couldnt stop him. The boards mandate, spelled out in the Medical Practice Act, recognizes a doctors license as a hard-won, valuable credential. At the time, Duntsch had been fielding offers in Dallas, SanDiegoand New York from medical centers eager to have a neurosurgeon with hisseeminglyimpressive resume on staff. Martin selected Dr. Christopher Duntsch, a neurosurgeon with a glowing reputation, to perform the surgery at Baylor Plano Hospital. Hes been devastated, Don Duntsch said. The first surgery went fine. Instead, Duntsch would find himself behind bars for life after botching more than 30 surgeriesresulting in the death of two patients and earning him the nickname Dr. With the exception of pain management clinics and anesthesiologists, the board doesnt have the authority to inspect a doctor, or to start an investigation on its own. In an official statement, she wrote, The way the lawis currently written, with a high bar of evidence for the board to meet, the process can take time so that the board can build a solid case. Those who met him described him as being fast-talking, confident, and someone who always had a plan to fix patients' ailments, per D Magazine. Promotional materials distributed by your outlet, including all social media work, must include cites for the Observer and our reporter. I dont know what it is, she said. But a few years later, he popped up in Kermit doing just thatas well as selling drugs out of the operating room and performing bizarre surgeries he hadnt been trained for. He wanted to live the high life and a neurosurgeon makes big bucks. CHRISTOPHER Duntsch, is infamously known as Dr Death for gross malpractice. According to Baylor, Duntsch had clinical privileges when he resigned. In a specialized field like neurosurgery, that means further months of delay. He nicked the patients vertebral artery, causing the space he was working in to fill with blood. Speaking to Inside Edition, they called him "a snake in the grass," "a monster," "drug addict" and even "a psychopath.". I was very independent and I had to become dependent on others for transportation, for my meals, for a lot of things," she said. But her dream of Duntsch being her Prince Charming is now nothing more than a memory. Partners must notify. Outlets must also tag the Observer in all social media posts. This guy already killed somebody, made another a quad, made a partial paraplegic out of my patient. I said, He needs to be stopped. Duntsch went back into the operating room and left Don waiting. Victim statements reveal more gruesome details of botched surgeries - WFAA He was a megalomaniac. 'Dr. Death': Who Are the Real People in the True-Crime Drama? - Newsweek Shes also worked as a social editor for House Beautiful and had previous writing stints at Redbook,CosmopolitanandSeventeen. Site made in collaboration with CMYK. Physicians who complained about Duntsch to the Texas Medical Board and to the hospitals he worked at described his practice in superlative terms. He doesnt care what he has left in his wake.. Joshua Jackson as Christopher Duntsch in "Dr. Death." Barbara Nitke/Peacock Duntsch, 50, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2017 in what's considered a precedent-setting case one of the. He told Young that Morgan was his assistant and there was nothing romantic going on between the pair. I think what happened is that as things began to fall apart, the only thing he knew was to try harder, Don Duntsch said. Young told D Magazine the incident had simply been a misunderstanding after she had given birth to the couples second son and had asked Duntsch to bring Aiden to the hospital to meet his new brother. Then he waited for several more hours until the nurses came out to tell him and his daughters that Kellie Martin was dead. The series is based on reporting from the podcast Dr. Death, from the same production studio that created Dirty John. So to be able to do that much wrong, I felt that he must have known at some point in time how to do it right. But as in many other areas in Texasbenzene pollution from hydraulic fracturing sites; ammonium nitrate pileups at fertilizer plantsMartins death and Summers paralysis fell into a regulatory no mans land. According to The Dallas Morning News, he will be up for parole in 2045, when he is 74. We felt confident too.. "Based on a hit podcast and inspired by the terrifying true story of Dr. Christopher Duntsch, a young and charismatic star in the Texas medical community," Peacock explains about the series. Every patient that I interviewed told me that one of the first things Dr. Duntsch would tell them when they initially met was that he was the best surgeon in Dallas," Henderson, played by Alec Baldwin in the show, told People. Written by Patrick Macmanus, the show will only be available exclusively on Peacock. Every time a doctor loses clinical privileges at a hospital, or has them suspended, hospitals are required by law to notify the National Practitioner Databank. He talked impressive. I was very independent and I had to become dependent on others for transportation, for my meals, for a lot of things.". "He has a job inside the prison. He had no idea what he was doing. Jurors also heard from doctors, nurses and other medical professionals who testified theywere shocked by what they saw Duntsch do during and after those surgeries. The board forbade Arafiles to supervise nurses or physician assistants anymore. Two weeks later, on June 14, 2013, Kirby got a call to come to University General to do a recovery surgery on one of Duntschs patients. He became a quadriplegic, and in February 2021, died from an infection connected to that very surgery one decade prior, per Local 24 News. They shouldnt ever happen in someones entire career. What remained was the Texas Medical Board. Doctors, and then, later, lawyers would call the boards investigators and sometimes even the board members themselves, begging them to do something. In doing so, hospitals preserved Duntsch's reputation. 'Dr. Death': Texas Neurosurgeon Sentenced to Life in Prison - People Dr. Death is the new true-crime drama on Peacock, based on the 2018 podcast series of the same name. Jackson developed a perspective on his character. Brown was later found unresponsive in her hospital room and staff couldnt contact Duntsch for 90 minutes, according to those records. You can chip in for as little as 99 cents a month. In one, Duntsch tells the story, over stock footage of an operation, of a taxing back surgery he performed on an older woman. He had a doctorate in molecular biology as well as a medical degree from the University. Because investigations are confidential, Duntschs public record with the Texas Medical Board remained clean. Her spine was pockmarked with screw holes, and a screw had been lodged in another nerve root near the bottom of her spine," D Magazine describes. Duntsch, he said, was the worst. CHRISTOPHER Duntsch, is infamously known as Dr Death for gross malpractice. Jurors convicted Duntsch Tuesday of injury to an elderly person in the botched July 2012 surgery that put Mary Efurd in a wheelchair. Per Bustle, Christopher is currently incarcerated at O.B. In 2012, the public interest research group Public Citizen commissioned a research project to cross-reference doctors sanctioned by the Texas Medical Board with those listed in the National Practitioner Databank, managed by the federal Department of Health and Human Services. In 2007, he was found to be leaving presigned prescription pads with his nurse so she could prescribe controlled substances while he was away, according to Public Citizen. At one point Dr. Henderson sent me a tape of a conversation he had with the main Medical Board investigator assigned to Duntschs case. The Texas Medical Board finally suspended Duntsch's license on June 26, 2013, and permanently revoked it in December of that year. In November 2011 he was granted surgical privileges at Baylor Regional Medical Center of Plano. He felt, Kirby wrote to the Texas Medical Board a year later, that most of the spine surgery being done in Dallas was malpractice, and he was going to have to clean things up.. Within a month of hiring Kimberly Morgan, who was a nurse practitioner, to help him run his new practice, the pair were sleeping together, according to the podcast. Prince Charming, Im gonna change your life, Wendy Young said of the promising start to her romance with Christopher Duntsch. For weeks, jurors heard the accounts of patients who had been maimed or paralyzed in bungled surgeries. We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back. are both available to stream on Peacock now. The Terrifying True Story Behind Peacock's Dr. Death - Yahoo Duntsch, it turned out, had, as with other patients, cut into Glidewells vertebral artery; an MRI found that he had also left a sponge festering in the soft tissue of Glidewells throat. Duntschs case raises the question: If it took a year to stop a doctor accused of this much, what else is getting through? More than a year had passed since Kellie Martins death and the complaint that started it all. In 2008 one of his patients died of a prescription drug overdose after he had prescribed her a lethal dose of the painkiller Tramadol. You could have a Medical Board thats the size of the [Texas Department of Public Safety], she said, but the state doesnt want that. The investigator, Maria Lopez, lets him yell. He wrote grants and secured more than $3 million in funding. Deathand the intense media scrutiny surrounding the shocking case would drive Young out of Dallas with the couples two sons. This is what I wanted, she said. After growing up in Tennessee,. In February 2021, Summers died of an infection directly related to the surgery. She said she thought he was going to make millions. Oxygen Insider is your all-access pass to never-before-seen content, free digital evidence kits, and much more. The jury came back with their verdict in about an hour. He listed the cause of death as therapeutic misadventure, according to his report. Public Citizen concluded that the board moves slowly because its understaffed and underfunded. Public Citizen found that 793 Texas doctors had lost clinical privileges between 1990 and 2011. Young was soon pregnantbut Duntsch had already developed a wandering eye. His mom was a teacher. I think their rationale was, hes a trained neurosurgeon, a combined M.D.-Ph.D., Henderson said. We have to consider the uncomfortable possibility that Christopher Duntsch is to the medical system what the recent West explosion was to the fertilizer industrya regrettable tragedy, but the price of living in a free-market system. And still it took the Texas Medical Board more than a year to stop Duntscha year in which he kept bringing into the operating room patients who ended up seriously injured or dead. This was the time when Dr. Christopher Duntsch started to turn into Dr. Death. Mr. .css-lwn4i5{display:block;font-family:Neutra,Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif;font-weight:bold;letter-spacing:-0.01rem;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;text-align:center;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}@media (any-hover: hover){.css-lwn4i5:hover{color:link-hover;}}@media(max-width: 48rem){.css-lwn4i5{font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.1;}}@media(min-width: 40.625rem){.css-lwn4i5{font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.1;}}@media(min-width: 48rem){.css-lwn4i5{font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.1;}}@media(min-width: 64rem){.css-lwn4i5{font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.1;}}Leann Rimes Shares Video Montage for Anniversary, Read Erin Napier's Post about 'Home Town', Christie Brinkley = Iconic In Bareback Riding Pic, 35 Celebrity Relationships That Upset Fans, Celebrities You Didn't Know Had Famous Moms, 30 Celebrity Feuds That Were Never Resolved, Celebrity Couples from 50 Years You Forgot About, We Ranked Every Single Adam Sandler Movie, 34 'Bridgerton' Fun Facts to Fuel Your Obsession, Where Youve Seen the Cast of Bridgerton Before. Dr. Kirby, on his end, called him a sociopath. By Jill Sederstrom & Leah Carroll Joshua Jackson On Role Of Surgeon, Christopher Duntsch, In Peacock's "Dr. Death" Series Now Playing Digital Original According to his ex-girlfriend Wendy Young (played by Mollie Griggs in the show), Duntsch is in touch with his two sons. So why didnt he stop? Shughart said. According to the outlet, while Jerry's lawyer said Christopher could now be criminally charged after his client's death, he believes Jerry wouldn't want that "because he had forgiven his friend for what had happened.". Because of greed. Melinda Lehmann, his defense attorney, said Duntsch was a scapegoat for a medical establishment that just kept hiring him and putting him in operating rooms. I dont know what it is," she said on CNBC's American Greed. Anatomy of a Tragedy - The Texas Observer But its more complicated than that. So I called them up, and they said, Will you fill out a complaint, and well probably read the complaint in about 30 days, and well start an investigation after that., I said, You dont seem to understand. She would be present during the spinal . A dissection of an esophagus led to significant blood loss in one patient. I am ready to leave the love and kindness and goodness and patience that I mix with everything else that I am and become a cold blooded killer.".

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