Hospital settles suit, pledges tough stance on drugtesting policy

Family receives $10.5 million, endorsement of legislative effort
from Lubbock hospital

By MARK BABINECK
Associated Press

LUBBOCK A Lubbock hospital will revamp its drug testing policy
and pay $10.5 million to the family of a pregnant woman who died
in 1995 after she was anesthetized by a drugabusing doctor.

South Park Hospital also has agreed to join the father of Margo
Glickman Johnson in calling for the Texas Legislature to address
the rights of patients who sue hospitals.

"This is unprecedented," said Richard Mithoff, attorney for
father Jake Glickman, a Big Spring resident. "I've been at this
for 25 years. What this does is set a standard for every hospital
in the country in terms of drug screening of emergency room and
nursing personnel."

Mithoff is a prominent Houston attorney also is involved in a
major breastimplant lawsuit

The hospital admitted no liability in the Lubbock case, defense
attorney D. Thomas Johnson said, but it pledged to strengthen its
drug policy regarding doctors, including random testing and drug
related education.

South Park's staff must approve a change in the hospital bylaws
permitting drug testing, hospital chief executive officer Clint
Matthews said.

Matthews said he was not aware of another hospital that randomly
checks physicians for drug abuse.

The $10.5 million payment, part of the settlement approved by a
judge on Tuesday, was the maximum allowed by law, Mithoff said.

South Park was a unit of Tennesseebased Ornda HealthCorp at the
time of Johnson's death. It's now owned by Tenet Health Care
Corp. of California.

The parties agreed to the settlement on July 3, a day before the
twoyear anniversary of Johnson's death from complications after
a doctor misplaced epidural anesthetic, attorneys said .

The anesthesiologist, Dr. Jack Dunn III, was impaired and missed
the epidural space in the 20yearold woman's lower back, instead
striking the vena cava, a major vein leading to her heart, the
lawsuit alleged. Johnson died quickly of a heart attack and her
baby was not delivered.

Dunn had settled with the family earlier. There was no answer at
his Lubbock phone number Wednesday.

The key was a 14page handwritten letter from Dunn to his
girlfriend in which he detailed his addiction to a variety of
drugs, many available at the hospital.

Under current state law, the hospital was immune from releasing
the letter during the discovery phase. A sympathetic nurse
secretly supplied plaintiffs with the evidence four months ago,
Mithoff said.

"It was horribly damning," said Mithoff.

A recent Texas Supreme Court ruling forces patients to prove that
a hospital acted with malice by allowing an incompetent or
impaired physician to work there. The burden of proof of such
extreme negligence would have been extraordinary without the
letter, Mithoff said.

"We were fortunate to be able to get this internal document,"
Mithoff said. "It's a classic example of why the (disclosure) law
needs to be looked at. If you have doctors on drugs, it's the
kind of thing patients and other hospitals would like to know."

South Park pledged to support Glickman's effort urging lawmakers
to address both the disclosure of physician information that
"potentially affects the health and safety of patients" and the
issue of whether hospitals should be liable when they are
negligent in credentialing physicians.

Johnson the hospital only agreed to support a law "giving
consideration to the concerns of patients, physicians and
hospitals."

South Park won't necessarily endorse Glickman's suggestions to
change the laws, Johnson said.