Physician claims charts were doctored

VERNAL — A doctor barred from practicing medicine at Ashley Regional Medical Center since October claims patient records were falsified as part of an effort to force his departure.

Dr. Richard Thomas is suing the medical center, claiming its chief executive officer, Si Hutt, released confidential information about him that harmed his medical practice. Thomas' lawsuit also names Bruce Guyant, the regional director of physician recruiting for LifePoint Hospitals, the medical center's parent company, as a defendant.

Thomas, an obstetrician and gynecologist, claims he began experiencing "friction" with the hospital and Hutt sometime last year, which resulted in a decision to "push Dr. Thomas out." According to the lawsuit, Hutt told employees at a confidential staff meeting in August that Thomas was "not going to make it" and the hospital was actively recruiting another obstetrician.

"Dr. Thomas' practice is particularly reliant on referrals from Ashley Regional's medical staff," the lawsuit states, adding that doctors are less likely to refer a patient to an obstetrician who isn't going to be in the community in the future, due to a desire for continuity of care throughout a patient's pregnancy.

Thomas claims the comments by Hutt were followed by a mass e-mail that Guyant sent out as a recruiting notice. The e-mail included the statement that Thomas was "struggling, and it appears he may not stay in the community," the lawsuit alleges.

Then in early October, Thomas claims, records for two of his surgical patients were falsified to reflect that he had been informed of their worsening medical conditions, when he maintains he had not. Both patients required additional surgery, and one had to be airlifted to the Wasatch Front for further treatment.

In one case, Thomas alleges, a nurse falsified entries in a patient's charts to make it appear that she had properly monitored the patient and alerted him "in a timely fashion to the patient's declining blood pressure and suspected blood loss."

"(The nurse's) chart notes also contain inconsistencies suggesting she was with the patient in the patient's room, when in fact (the patient) was in surgery," the lawsuit states.

Thomas said that after learning of the "deliberate misrepresentations and inconsistencies" in the patient's chart, he dictated his own note to document his care of the patient and his belief that the nurse had falsified her account. He claims that the hospital subsequently removed his note from the electronic medical record for several weeks before reinserting it into the patient's chart.