Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Lawsuit against Kaiser Permanente: doctors did not do pathology testing on growth

Lawsuit against Kaiser Permanente: doctors did not do pathology testing on growth
Courthouse News Service
October 17, 2012

SANTA ANA, Calif. (CN) - With classic signs of basal cell carcinoma, a woman was left with a growth on her eyelid for 2.5 years, her court complaint alleges, in Orange County Superior Court.

Kaiser has "policies and procedures that instructed and ordered defendant Wong and other physicians within defendant Kaiser's physician groups to refrain, for financial and/or cost cutting reasons, from sending the material removed from plaintiff's eye-lid for pathology or biopsy testing," until the third time the growth was excised, the patient alleges in her court complaint.

Five months before a correct diagnosis, along with growth removal and reconstructive surgery of the patient's eyelid, leaving her with a deformity, Kaiser's "specialist" (italics in complaint) noted that the growth showed "characteristics of being 'thick walled,' " but still did not send the matter removed from the site to a lab for testing, the woman says in her court complaint.

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