Source: Star News
Negative experiences with North Carolina doctors who allegedly botched, mishandled or misrepresented their cases are prominent in a civil lawsuit filed Wednesday that seeks to compel the state’s regulatory medical board to open up the selection process of its physician members.

Stephen E. Olchowski, who formerly practiced in Wilmington, is prominently mentioned in the lawsuit. The legal action, filed in Wake County Superior Court, maintains the N.C. Medical Society has the ultimate power to choose all physician members of the N.C. Medical Board, creating a conflict of interest because the Medical Society is the doctors’ “trade association.” Both organizations are named as defendants, along with Gov. Mike Easley and the state. The lawsuit does not seek money and instead asks for “declaratory and injunctive relief to remedy violations of the North Carolina Constitution.”

Plaintiff Kelly Mintz, of Pender County, said Wednesday that it took three years for the N.C. Medical Board to act on her complaints about Olchowski. A separate negligence lawsuit filed several years ago by Mintz alleges that Olchowski performed the wrong type of stomach stapling surgery on her and didn’t do it correctly.

“I feel very compassionate about changes being made by the Medical Board so citizens like myself can be protected when there is a problem,” Mintz said. Medical Society priorities “completely contradict the agenda the Medical Board is supposed to have,” said Melissa Pollock, a Wilmington lawyer who represents Mintz. One focus of the Medical Society, she said, is tort reform aimed at limiting damages paid to those injured by medical malpractice. “Because of the control exercised by the Medical Society, the Medical Board has repeatedly failed to fulfill its duty to identify, investigate and prosecute physicians who endanger North Carolina patients,” the lawsuit states.

Physicians who are not Medical Society members are denied the opportunity to participate in the selection of Medical Board members, it continues, violating rights guaranteed under the N.C. Constitution. Medical Society spokesman Mike Edwards declined to comment on the lawsuit. The Medical Society’s Web site states the organization is required to nominate doctors to the governor’s office when there are open positions. “Applicants need not be members of the NCMS nor any professional society,” it says. The Medical Board is aware of the lawsuit, spokeswoman Dena Konkel said. “Since it’s a legal issue before the courts we don’t believe it’s right to comment,” she said. Easley’s office also declined comment.

Plaintiff Lynette Miracle saw doctors William M. Riddle and Kenneth L. Jacobs in 2001-02 at the Goshen Clinic in Duplin County. The lawsuit alleges that Miracle told doctors about a lump in her breast and “despite obvious signs of malignancy,” they failed to diagnose Miracle’s breast cancer or refer her to a specialist. It states that both doctors were “drug addicts” whose licenses had been reinstated by the Medical Board. Neither doctor currently practices medicine in North Carolina.

Plaintiff Nancy Carpenter’s father, Conrad Oster, was admitted in December 2001 to Cape Fear Valley Medical Center in Fayetteville for a bypass operation on his right leg. He subsequently suffered severe bleeding and acute anemia and the attending cardiovascular surgeon, Dr. Robert Fietsam, “failed to respond to the crisis,” according to the lawsuit. Oster died in January 2002, and the Medical Board “took no effective action” against Fietsam, who maintains his medical license.

Dr. John Faulkner, a primary care physician in Raleigh, is also a plaintiff. Faulkner’s wife suffered severe burns in 2002 “in a preventable operating room fire” during surgery at a hospital in Franklin County, according to the lawsuit. Faulkner is not a Medical Society member. Olchowski came to Wilmington in the mid-1990s from Michigan. He started a bariatric program at New Hanover Regional Medical Center and was the first doctor in Southeastern North Carolina to offer stomach-stapling surgeries considered the last resort for those seeking to lose weight.

Olchowski was performing about 15 gastric bypass surgeries per week by 2000. Lawsuits filed in ensuing years allege Olchowski promised one type of weight-loss surgery but delivered another, less-proven procedure. Others claim he made mistakes during surgery. Mintz said Medical Board representatives were sympathetic when she spoke with them in 2002 and ensured her “things would change.”

“It took three years and an article in the Star-News before they chose to do anything about it,” Mintz said. Nearly three dozen medical malpractice lawsuits were pending against Olchowski by 2005. About that time, he moved back to Michigan to practice medicine amid a flurry of local malpractice lawsuits. Olchowski’s medical license was revoked in August 2005 by the N.C. Medical Board. His Michigan license was summarily suspended in November 2005. He legally changed his last name from Olchowski to Hawkins the same year. The Olchowski episode and the experiences of others bring to light “a long-standing problem” with the Medical Board, said Raleigh lawyer Burton Craige, who represents the plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed Wednesday.

“People have been talking about this for several years. You have an obvious conflict here with a trade association naming all the professional members of a regulatory board,” Craige said. “We’ve had discussions with legislators in the past on it and there hasn’t been a move on the part of the Medical Board to address this. We’ve invited them to and we were hoping they would do something but they didn’t, so we filed suit.”