Inset: Dr. Sudesh Ebenezer (McLaren Health Care/Insight Institute of Neurosurgery & Neuroscience). Background: The Hurley Medical Center in Flint, Mich., where Dr. Sudesh Ebenezer reports that the staff “lost track” of a year-old baby who subsequently passed away (Google Maps).
A neurosurgeon from Michigan is taking legal action against a hospital, alleging “retaliation” for raising “serious concerns” about patient safety after the institution’s medical personnel “lost track” of a one-year-old baby who later died, according to his legal filing.
Dr. Sudesh Ebenezer, working as an independent contractor, has accused the Hurley Medical Center in Flint of unjustly dismissing him from his role on their Neurosurgery Trauma Panel and call list after the 2022 event.
The agreement Ebenezer held through his employer, Shah Practice Group at the Insight Institute of Neurosurgery and Neuroscience, which engaged him with HMC—a “governmental entity”—was said to have been violated. Consequently, his earnings plunged “by more than sixteen times,” leading to “financial loss and damage to reputation,” as delineated in Ebenezer’s lawsuit, filed recently in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.
“On the night of December 9, 2022, [Ebenezer] was summoned to treat a toddler with a traumatic head injury,” the lawsuit details. “As he geared up for surgery, Hurley’s trauma team informed him that the procedure was off since the child had supposedly been transferred to another facility. In fact, the child remained at Hurley—the staff merely failed to keep track of the patient.”
Ebenezer asserts that upon his arrival that evening, he was “alarmed” to find that several routine diagnostic and radiological assessments had not been carried out. This situation purportedly hindered him from “promptly performing surgery” on the child, according to the lawsuit.
“Specifically, [Ebenezer] noted that Hurley staff failed to obtain a CT scan of the child’s head despite being advised to do so, failed to obtain coagulation labs to assess whether the child’s blood was properly clotting, failed to correct gross coagulation abnormalities, failed to correct ongoing high pCO2 levels, and failed to obtain chest imaging in a timely fashion,” the complaint alleges. “Unfortunately, the child passed away on December 10, 2022.”
Ebenezer says that between Dec. 9 and Dec. 10, 2022, he communicated his “grave concerns” regarding patient safety and quality of care to multiple Hurley employees, “including but not limited to” the attending trauma surgeon, members of the trauma team, and physician assistants.
In response, HMC allegedly blamed Ebenezer for what happened “to silence his complaints and pass the blame onto him, as opposed to implicating its direct employees of its prestigious Level I Trauma Center,” the complaint charges.
“In doing so, Hurley, inter alia, violated plaintiff’s First Amendment rights and tortiously interfered with his business relationship, expectancy, and contract with the Shah Practice Group,” the document adds.
Ebenezer says he received a letter several days later from Hurley’s trauma medical director that said the “timeliness” of Ebenezer’s response and his “engagement in the care of a patient as the on-call neurosurgeon implicated both patient safety and quality of care concerns,” per the complaint.
Ebenezer is seeking compensatory damages for “past and future earnings loss,” according to his lawsuit, as well as injunctive relief “as the court may deem just and proper.”
A Hurley spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on Sunday.
