The Texas Medical Board Tolerates Child Molestors

So says this article in the Dallas Morning News.

After its last meeting, in late August, the board announced decisions on four sex-related cases. Two involved doctors whom judges had already sentenced for crimes against children. Two involved psychiatrists found to have had affairs with adult patients – potentially sexual assault under Texas law, but they've not been charged.

The child abusers were allowed to go on practicing medicine, though not with kids. The other two are working without restrictions.

It's all part of a broader pattern of tolerance for misconduct, a News analysis shows. Others who kept their licenses after the August meeting include two doctors convicted of lucrative federal crimes that put patients in harm's way; a neurosurgeon who operated on the wrong body part four times; a cardiologist found to have performed dozens of invasive procedures with little or no cause; and at least seven physicians linked to a death.

In the article, the Texas Medical Board explains this and other problems in their disciplinary process to the process itself.

The "further improvements" reference points back to 2002, when the newspaper series led to reform pledges – and to actual change. The board got money to expand its investigative and legal operations. It began examining malpractice claims, many involving patient deaths, which had been ignored for years. The number of cases resulting in discipline shot up. More doctors began to lose their licenses.

But while playing catch-up, the board also has faced a surge of new business. It granted almost 50 percent more licenses in the recently ended fiscal year than in 2002. The number of patients complaining to the board was up 35 percent.

Texas is "a favorable location to practice medicine" because of a relatively strong economy and caps on malpractice awards, board officials explained in a legislative funding request last year. The caps, which voters approved in 2003, also "may have resulted in patients who previously filed malpractice suits now turning to the state regulatory agency to resolve concerns about their care."

The TMB essentially says that with Texas having a good economy as well as favorable laws for doctors (see tort reform) that their resources are extended. In fact, I think there's a much simpler reason and that's corruption. The reason that the TMB doesn't punish bad doctors is because the TMB is filled with systemic corruption. Besides the four doctors mentioned in the piece that should have their license revoked, I'll add a few more that I know of. First, there's Dr. Dan Dugi of Cuero, Texas. In this early 2007 report, Dr. Dugi was caught by investigative reporters from Houston's KPRC of testing a drug not approved by the FDA without patients' permission.

Food and Drug Administration has launched an investigation into a mysterious medicine that was tested on patients in several small towns southwest of Houston, Local 2 Investigates reported Thursday.

The federal investigation centers around a complaint filed by a nurse anesthetist who reported that he witnessed the unapproved drug being given to patients without their knowledge or consent.

...

emphasized in an elaborate sales packet that Dugi provided to Local 2 Investigates.
Former CEO Buckner said, "When I asked him what was in this product as the active ingredient, he wouldn't disclose it, (saying) 'It's still patent pending, waiting for FDA approval,' and they couldn't share that information with us."

In the promotional literature provided to Local 2 Investigates, Dugi wrote that he had treated "well over 1000 patients" and he reported "a superior success rate" in over 90 percent of the patients he treated.

The sales pamphlet then contains 18 separate entries marked "Case Summary," spelling out how the drug performed when applied to those patients' wounds. Some of the documents are marked, "Confidential," but Dugi admitted to KPRC Local 2 that they were all his patients. Photographs and graphs illustrate the healing of the various wounds.

When KPRC Local 2 Investigates approached Dugi for answers, he invited the camera crew into a back room at one of his clinics, but he said very little.

"No filming! No filming!" Dugi said.

The main source on this story, Tim Goosby, had given all of this information and more to the TMB starting in 2003. Dr. Dugi continues in his position at Cuero Community Hospital to this day. The FDA has since removed the drug. Dugi is now being investigated by the U.S. Attorney in the area for crimes related to this and other events.

Then, there's the case of Dr. Mark Blotcky. Dr. Blotcky has had complaints to the board by three former patients that I've confirmed. The most recent complaint came within the last year. Complaints range from misdiagnosis, misuse of prescription drugs, as well as all sorts of corruption related charges related to his duties as an expert witness in the Dallas County family court system. Dr. Blotcky continues to be a practicing psychiatrist in Dallas today.

On the other side, the TMB often targets doctors for wrongdoing for marginal issues. For instance, there's the case of Dr. Bill Rea. Dr. Rea was investigated by the TMB following an anonymous complaint from a patient in 2005. Soon enough, it became obvious that the complaint was actually coming from Oxford Medical Insurance. Dr. Rea became a leader in the field of environmental medicine and was able to build his practice without accepting insurance. Dr. Rea employed the help of his roughly 30000 patients and many wrote and communicated to the TMB of his effectiveness. Still, the TMB continued to investigate Dr. Rea for the better part of three years.

I've also featured the cases of Dr. Chris Kuhne and Dr. Shirley Pigott . The TMB threatened to remove Dr. Pigott's license for not providing a set of medical tests in proper time to a patient. Dr. Kuhne had a similar situation with a patient that was changing doctors and asked for their records. When those records didn't arrive on time, the TMB went after Dr. Kuhne, in a case that wound up lasting about four years.

The long time head of the TMB disciplinary committee, Dr. Keith Miller, was removed about two years ago for charges related to corruption in his role on this committee. (It's this committee that decides punishments for the likes of Dr. Kuehne, Dr. Rea and Dr. Blotcky) In fact, TMB corruption was the subject of a Texas legislature hearings and the conclusions from the legislature were scathing.

Greetings! Three months of grueling preparation paid off handsomely as the Texas
Medical Board took one crushing blow after another from the questions of the legislators on the committee and from the testimonies from the physicians and others at the October 23, 2007 House Appropriations Subcommittee on Regulatory Hearing. This hearing was convened to investigate the abuse of power by the Texas Medical Board. It was a marathon session lasting 11-1/2 hours. Without this hearing we would not have been able to expose the corruption at the TMB. We all owe a debt of gratitude to Representative Fred Brown who, by holding this hearing, demonstrated indomitable courage and determination in the face of extreme political pressure to abandon it.

The hearing made it clear that there is an unholy cabal made up of Don Patrick, Executive Director, Mari Robinson, Director of Litigation and Enforcement, and Roberta Kalafut, President of the TMB, who have despoiled the TMB. There can be no reform without removing them from the board.

Both Kalafut and Patrick have either left the board, or in the case of Patrick retired, but Mari Robinson is still the Executive Director of the Texas Medical Board. Finally, at those hearings, Mari Robinson claimed that Dr. Chris Kuehne signed an affidavit admitting to sexual misconduct with a patient. Dr. Kuehne denied this charge to me and stated unequivocally that there is no such affidavit. Robinson, to this day, has never produced this affidavit. Since she was under oath in front of the legislature, if this is a lie, that would constitute perjury.

The article I linked at the start is the first article in a long time really lifting the veil of the TMB to come from the MSM. Still, it merely scratches the surface. It remains to be seen of the Dallas News, and the author of this piece, Brook Egerton, will stop here or follow up. There should be no shortage of stories if they choose the latter.

Human Guinea Pigs, Sham Peer Review, and The Governor III

Introduction: I will be making references that you simply won't be able to follow unless you read part one and part two. Furthermore, I will make references to other cases I have covered. I will provide a link everytime so feel free to link over and get details.

The cruelest of cruel ironies of this story is that the only thing that Tim Goosby could have done to avoid the nightmare that he found himself in is to not have taken the job in the first place. The only other way he could have avoided this nightmare is to have corrupted himself and gotten into bed with the corruptors that he blew the whistle on. Just think about that for a minute and realize that any system structured for such an outcome is one that needs a total and complete overhaul.

The most glaring problem in the system is the obscene amount of power all centered in the hands of the Texas Nursing Board. The entire appeals process beyond the nursing board in Texas is entirely to bring recommendations back to the board itself. If the TNB is corrupt (and it is), then the entire appeals process is irrelevant. In the case of Tim Goosby, a law judge ruled in his favor when he appealed the corrupt verdict. That meant absolutely nothing because the law judge's ruling was non binding. It was only meant as a guide for the TNB which always had the ultimate say. Thus, once the TNB got the motivation to punish Goosby, there was no escaping their wrath.

The second tragic and glaring weakness of the system is the total lack of protection whistle blowers have. Tim Goosby found out about ILLEGAL DRUG TESTING. That isn't merely som clerical error or finding out that someone comes in five minutes late often. Dr. Dan Dugi was testing a drug not yet approved on unsuspecting patients. Tim Goosby faced one of two choices. He either looked the other way and allow this evil to continue, or worse, he blew the whistle and wound up making his own life a living hell. If whistle blowers face absolutely no protection, then what that does is encourage corrupt behavior at hospitals all over the place. The reason that Dr. Dugi so brazenly broke the law is exactly because he knew that he could punish and eliminate anyone that tried to get in his way. The lack of protections for whistleblowers currently not in our legal system encourages the medical field to continue with the kind of corruption we see here.

Lastly, the Texas medical field is corrupt in a manner that should alarm all residents not only in Texas but in the United States. The case of Dr. Shirley Pigott revealed that Blue Cross/Blue Shield has corrupted the entire medical system in order to punish and intimidate doctors it doesn't like. BCBS is the single biggest health insurer in the state of Texas. The cases of Dr. Chris Kuhne and Dr. Bill Rea show that the Texas Medical Board has been completely corrupted and thousands of Texas doctors have faced the wrath of sham peer review as a result. Now, we have the case of Tim Goosby.

This case reveals that the Texas Nursing Board is as corrupt as the other entities, and it punishes some nurse for blowing the whistle, while protecting other nurses that have the right connection.You simply cannot have a system this corrupted with absolutely no consequences beyond "merely" those of the targeted professionals. The medical system in Texas is corrupted at every level. In the case of Dr. Shirley Pigott, BCBS employed the Texas Medical Board, Texas Medical Association, and Texas Association of Family Physicians, to orchestrate its corruption.

What this means is that nearly every single entity that is supposed to make sure that medicine is performed properly in Texas is actually corrupted and creates the opposite effect. Furthermore, the case of Tim Goosby also revealed a governor's office that's either incompetent or corrupt, but ultimately one, that is asleep at the wheel while its entire medical system is totally corrupted.

This affects all aspects of the way in which medicine is performed both in Texas and in the U.S. Everything from health insurance rates, to patient care, to medical professional competence is affected. You simply are not going to solve the "health care crisis" if this situation is not solved first. If the single biggest health care provider is allowed to corrupt the system, and every single government and professional agency is its partner, then there are no fixes unless this is fixed first.

Lastly, aren't doctors and nurses American citizens also? If they are, then I firmly believe that they deserve the same expectation of civil rights as everyone else. How would any of you reading this feel if you tried to do the right thing and as a result had the rest of your life turned into a living hell? Would you feel as though you received the same civil rights that this country was founded on? Why are we all then standing by and allowing all of these doctors to have their civil rights snatched from them by corrupt forces all over their field? To me at least, this is not the least bit acceptable, and it needs to stop immediately. It won't as long the public in general turns a blind eye to it. As the saying goes

evil flourishes when good men stand by and do nothing

Also, please check out other such stories like a doctor in South Carolina that was targeted for reporting on a serial killer nurse, a doctor in Texas targeted by Blue Cross/Blue Shield, the Texas Medical Board's systematic targeting of doctors, and of course the one that started it all the tragic case of obscene corruption at Atlanta's Grady Hospital. Please read them all and demand that action be taken so that the scourge of sham peer review ends.

The Texas Medical Board Vs. Doctors...More Corruption in Texas III

If this is your first taste of this series then I suggest reading part one and part two.

At this point, I want to take stock of what Dr. Kuhne and Dr. Rea's battle against the Texas Medical Board means in the larger context of what I have found and what it means in the health care debate.

On the television show the Shield about a corrupt cop named Vic Mackey, there was one episode that was a sort of pre qual. This episode was done prior to anything else that had happened in the show. By this point we had seen Mackey involved in all sorts of obscene corruption. (I won't give examples so that those that haven't seen the show aren't spoiled) This episode focused on Mackey's first day in his new role on the Strike Force.

In that episode, he and his team cut a small corner in order to make an arrest that higher ups were putting pressure on them on. At the end of the episode Mackey remarked to a fellow strike team member that doing it this way was a lot easier.

The point of the episode was not only to show that corruption starts small, but also to show that it is easier to be corrupt.

Both of those I believe are lessons of this tale. In 2002, the Dallas Morning News ran a series of stories condemning the Texas Medical Board for not being aggressive enough in prosecuting bad doctors. As a result of this story, the TMB was given license to act aggressively. They did, only as it turns out, they acted in a corrupt and aggressive manner.

In some perverted ways, the pressure to deliver more convictions naturally lead to more corruption. That's because it is much easier to trump up charges than to investigate legitimate claims. Legitimate claims take up significant resources, time, and financial resources that the TMB may not have or want to extend.

What has happened as a result is that thousands of doctors have been targeted on frivilous or even made up matters. I have shown three, Dr. Rea, Dr. Kuhne and Dr. Shirley Pigott. Yet, these three are merely an opening to a pandora's box that would lead to thousands of doctors who's professional careers have been systematiclly torn apart by corrupt governing bodies with nefarious agendas.

In fact, I am in the finishing stages of a story that will blow the lid on the Texas State Nursing board and show it is no less corrupt than the TMB.

So, how does all of this come about? Well, first, the TMB and the nursing board report up to the highest executive in the state of Texas, Rick Perry. If both these boards are systematically corrupt, then ultimately responsibility lies with him. Most of the corrupt players like Dr. Keith Miller, Dr. Roberta Kalafut were either chosen directly by Perry himself or spent years corrupting the board while he was governor. His lack of action in confronting their corruption ultimately means that he must be held to account for the thousands of lives ruined by this corrupt board.

Now, those reading this are likely to look at these cases in the abstract. Imagine yourself in the position of one of these doctors that was the victim of sham peer review in which charges were trumped, prosecuted, and judged by the exact same corrupt force. Dr. Kuhne has had to spend six figures to defend himself. His case is still not resolved to this day and it all started in 2004. Dr. Pigott was threatened with the removal of her license and with it her career on charges so absurd that they are the medical equivalent of J walking. Of course, their stories have finally been told. What about all those doctors that suffered in silence?

Of course, Texas is not the only state in which I have discovered systemic corruption. I found myself involved in all of these stories after working on uncovering the systematic corruption at Grady Hospital, one of the three largest hospitals in the country. Grady has been pilfered and corrupted for decades, and that corruption continues to this day. In that situation, most of the corruptors continue to be gainfully associated or employed by Grady to this day.

In South Carolina, Dr. Blake Moore exposed one of his nurses as a serial killer. Rather than prosecuting the nurse, Dr. Moore is in the fourth year of legislative battle with the State of South Carolina. In fact, for the last two plus years, the opposition to his case has been handled directly by the Attorney General, Henry McMasters, himself.

I am in the process of uncovering the systematic cover up of child abuse by the Connecticut Medical Board. I am certainly not suggesting that every medical board in the country is corrupt, but how many is too much? Why is the public perfectly comfortable with the Texas Medical Board being systematically corrupt?

This brings me to the next problem. That is the media. The media was all over the story when they discovered that the TMB wasn't prosecuting cases aggressively enough. When that lead directly to abuse the media was nowhere to be found. All of the doctors I spoke to in Texas told me that I had given them more time than any of the traditional media in their state. Isn't the systemic abuse of doctors a story worth printing? How can the corruption be cleaned up if no one even knows it exists?

In Atlanta, the Atlanta Journal Constitution isn't merely asleep at the wheel in reporting the systemic corruption going on at Grady Hospital, but they are likely active participants in its cover up. If the media refuses to expose corruption, then the corruptors have free reign to act as they will.

All of this is NOT just abstract. I have already shown that Blue Cross/Blue Shield has likely systematically corrupted the system to target those doctors that it feels cost them too much money. The stories I have uncovered lead me only to conclude that at least the states of Texas, Georgia, and South Carolina have their entire health care system systematically corrupted. Does anyone really think that the corruption is limited to these three states only. Is it really any wonder that health care costs are skyrocketing? Does anyone really think that we can continue to sit by while the system is corrupted from top to bottom and expect to "fix health care". Maybe, just maybe, it is the systemic corruption that is in and of itself ailing health care.

While the politicians are debating universal health care, health savings accounts, and tax breaks, no one is talking about the systemic corruption that is eating away at the system. Dr. Kuhne told me that he firmly believes that the aggressive TMB action has caused doctors in Texas to practice medicine much more defensively and be careful of their every little movement or wind up facing the wrath of frivilous TMB charges.

Furthermore, the tragic irony is that the TMB is ultimately a fairly unnecessary entity even if it doing its job properly. The medical system provides several layers of protection to patients against bad doctors. The market is the first layer. Bad doctors simply lose patients. The second is the plethora of rules and regulations that doctors always have to follow. The third is that all insurance companies have their own investigative bodies and patients that were wronged can always report their cases to them. Despite its questionable usefulness, the board has not only been corrupted but systemically corrupted.

Furthermore, sham peer review is not even a criminal offense. Sham peer reviews can only be pursued civilly. Furthermore, members of the TMB, and other government organs, enjoy total immunity from any prosecution anyway. Thus, this creates a great deal of power centered in the hands of groups like the TMB, and at the same time, the media refuses to act as a watchdog to make sure that power is used properly.

Thus, I can only lead to conclude that the health care crisis will not be resolved in any meaningful way by either political party until stories like the ones I am bringing to light are exposed to the mainstream, and the systemic corruption they expose is dealt with and eliminated. Until then, any rhetoric on fixing the so called health care crisis is nothing more than cheap rhetoric perpetrated by folks that have no idea what the inherent problem is.

The Texas Medical Board Vs. Doctors...More Corruption in Texas II (Updated)

If you have missed to prequal to this piece please check it out here

On October 31, 2001, Dr. Chris Kuhne received the first in a series of letters from Dee Whittlesey (that is the same Dee Whittlesey that played an active role in the sham peer review perpetrated on Dr. Shirley Pigott) The summary of the letter was that in the opinion of Blue Cross Blue Shield, Dr. Kuhne had fallen outside of the matrix of the amount of money that a doctor in his specialty should make. In other words, in the opinion of BCBS, Dr. Kuhne was charging too much. Dr. Kuhne specializes in obstetrics and gynecology or in other words, he treats any and all ailments that a female might have.

This letter was the beginning of a long battle between Dr. Kuhne and his main insurance provider BCBS. He estimates that roughly half his business is covered by BCBS, and thus this is an insurance provider that he must maintain in order to maintain any semblance of his business.

On Mar 7, 2003, his dispute with BCBS took a terrible turn for his business. Following a long and thorough investigation of his billing practices, BCBS determined that they were simply unacceptable and they terminated their relationship with Dr. Kuhne. He had been deselected, an extraordinary step that is almost never taken. Once BCBS has accepted a doctor into their network, they usually on deselect said doctor under the most extreme of cases.

Of course, the journey that Dr. Kuhne took with BCBS didn't end there. At the end of 2005, BCBS changed the manner in which they determined their matrices for billing. In layman's terms, they used to figure out billing based on gross amounts, and at the end of 2005, they started figuring it out per patient. After reviewing Dr. Kuhne's case, they determined that in fact the reason he made more money was simply because he served more patients than most doctors. In other words, his removal was entirely without cause and they immediately put him back in the network where he remains today. In fact, by 2007, BCBS awarded Dr. Kuhne their coveted Blue Compare award. This is given to those doctors that BCBS feels exhibited the most care in minimizing the costs incurred to their patients.

In other words, in a journey that started in 2001, BCBS went from kicking Dr. Kuhne out of its network for billing too much, to giving him an award for frugal billing. Besides the award, BCBS didn't compensate Dr. Kuhne in any manner for the three years they nearly fatally disrupted his business.

While Dr. Kuhne was having his battle with BCBS, he was simultaneously involved in another battle with a titan of Texas medicine, the Texas Medical Board. Here he crossed paths with another familiar name, Dr. Keith Miller the head of the TMB Disciplinary Board.

Two separate cases only months apart began Dr. Kuhne's battle with the TMB (a battle that continues to still be unresolved even today even though most of his adversaries have been exposed as corrupt. A battle I may add that has cost Dr. Kuhne in excess of 100,000 dollars in legal fees). Each of the two cases began during the middle of 2004.

The first case was rather mild. It started when a patient of his (obviously doctor patient confidentiality prohibits naming the patient) decided to switch doctors and asked for her medical records. Dr. Kuhne sent her a letter and stated that the records would cost her $43. When he didn't hear from the patient, he kept the records. After a few months, the patient corresponded and essentially verbalized that it was silly that he keep her records over a small fee. Dr. Kuhne agreed and went ahead and forwarded the record without charging a fee.

While the files were forwarded satisfactorially, the time period wound up being out of technical bounds for acceptable TMB standards. Because Dr. Kuhne didn't forward the records in a swift enough period, this landed him in front of the TMB, in a case that still remains unresolved today about four years later.

The second case was significantly more serious in terms of the scope of the charges. Another patient accused Dr. Kuhne of making lewd sexual comments, sexual assault, and other sexually related allegations.

In each of the cases, Dr. Keith Miller played an active role. In the case involving sexual assault, Dr. Miller lead the informal settlement conference proceedings, and in the other, he was a member of the TMB board that ultimately decided his fate.

First, let's go over again the sequence of events that are involved in any matter that winds up in front of the TMB. First, the doctor is given formal written notice of charges against them. Then, something called an informal settlement conference is heard. This is an oral hearing in front of members of the disciplinary board in which evidence is heard, witnesses are called, and the disciplinary board questions the witnesses. Months later the disciplinary board issues its findings. After this, if the doctor is unsatisfied with the verdict, they can move to appeal in front of what is called the State Office of Adminstration Hearings (S.O.A.H.)

The S.O.A.H. hearing is held in front of a law judge and that judge issues their findings. Then, the law judge presents their findings in front of the full TMB, a group of about 16-18 doctors and a few civilians, that rule on all the evidence that has been presented in front of them including the findings of the law judge.

In both cases, the disciplinary board initially ruled against Dr. Kuhne, and in each case the law judge for SOAH ruled in favor of Dr. Kuhne. In both cases, the full TMB then still ruled against Dr. Kuhne.

In Dr. Kuhne's case regarding the sexual assault, the case followed closely with another I have mentioned. That is the case of Dr. Bill Rea. In the case of Dr. Rea, Dr. Rea called up no less than 18 expert witnesses that that testified that Dr. Rea had done nothing wrong and that the charges against him were frivilous and wrong. In Dr. Rea's case, the TMB put up one expert, their own hired gun, to claim that Dr. Rea was being fairly targeted. In the case of Dr. Rea, the TMB went with the testimony of their one expert over the 18 that testified in favor of Dr. Rea. In Dr. Kuhne's case, he also put up more than a dozen experts and once again the TMB put up one hired gun. Again, in Dr. Kuhne's case, the TMB ruled in favor the testimony of one hired gun over the experts that testified on behalf of Dr. Kuhne.

The two cases have other important similarities. Both Dr. Rea and Dr. Kuhne were long standing and respected doctors and they had each even finished their residency at the respected Parkland Hospital in Dallas, Texas.

The two cases have important distinctions as well. Dr. Rea is a leader in the field of environmental medicine and he accepts no insurance. His patients pay him first and then take that bill to BCBS or whatever provider they may have. It is much more difficult for BCBS, or any other insurer, to argue with the patient themselves rather than with the doctor over billing. In other words, Dr. Rea is the insurance company's worst financial nightmare, a doctor they can't control. Dr. Kuhne, on the other hand, was involved in his own battle with BCBS at the beginning of each of these cases.

According to Dr. Kuhne's recollection, the final verdict in each of the cases in front of the full TMB was split. All the doctors voted in his favor (except Dr. Miller), and all the osteopaths voted against him. (with the civilians casting the deciding vote and voting slightly against him) This is important because a check of the current make up of the TMB finds only one osteopath. That osteopath is Dr. Roberta Kalafut and she is the current, and then, head of the TMB. Each of the other osteopaths were either purged from the board or left for other reasons. Dr. Keith Miller resigned from the board under the grips of all sorts of allegations of corruption.

(Updated, based on the criticism of a poster)

One other thing that is important to understand is that Dr. Kalafut received far less training and is far less skilled in medicine than either Dr. Kuhne or Dr. Rea. She went to osteopathic school and not a full medical school. Furthermore, she graduated from the fairly modest, Sinai Hospital, in Maryland. In other words, both Dr. Kuhne and Dr. Rea were being judged by a medical professional far less superior to them. Furthermore, her own bio on the TMB website is misleading.

Roberta Kalafut, D.O., of Abilene, earned her medical degree from Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine and completed her residency in physical medicine and rehabilitation at Johns Hopkins Hospital and Sinai Hospital of Baltimore, Maryland.

While technically she did spend time at both Johns Hopkins and Sinai, that's only because the hospitals are neighbors. All Sinai residents spend a few rotations at the prestigious Johns Hopkins, however she didn't graduate from there and the time she spent at Johns Hopkins was token at best.

Now, first this raises the question why was half the board made up of them. That can only be answered by the government of Texas and the TMB itself. More than that, when Dr. Kalafut was judging Dr. Kuhne and Dr. Rea, she was judging doctors far superior to her. It's like a journey man basketball player deciding the worth of Michael Jordan's basketball skills. The make up of the board at the time of the events opened it up intuitively for corruption and a total lack of fairness.

Finally, by 2007, Dr. Kuhne waged his battle for going on three years. By this point, he had allied himself with a Dr. Steve Hotze along with a group of doctors including Dr. Bill Rea that all felt they were the subject of sham peer review by the TMB. In October of 2007, they took their case to the Texas legislature. The results were scathing.

The Texas Medical Board took one crushing blow after another from the questions of the legislators on the committee and from the testimonies from the physicians and others at the October 23, 2007 House Appropriations Subcommittee on Regulatory Hearing. This hearing was convened to investigate the abuse of power by the Texas Medical Board. It was a marathon session lasting 11-1/2 hours. Without this hearing we would not have been able to expose the corruption at the TMB. We all owe a debt of gratitude to Representative Fred Brown who, by holding this hearing, demonstrated indomitable courage and determination in the face of extreme political pressure to abandon it.

The hearing made it clear that there is an unholy cabal made up of Don Patrick, Executive Director, Mari Robinson, Director of Litigation and Enforcement, and Roberta Kalafut, President of the TMB, who have despoiled the TMB. There can be no reform without removing them from the board.

Finally, at this hearing, Mari Robinson stated under oath that Dr. Kuhne signed an affidavit admitting to sexual misconduct. Dr. Kuhne has stated categorically that he signed no such agreement, and so far this agreement has NOT been produced. Mari Robinson is not only the Director of Litigation at the TMB but a licensed attorney. If she did lie under oath that is immediate grounds for removing her from the bar. That doesn't even speak to the criminal liability of potential perjury charges.

This whole sordid affair continues to unfold. The most shocking part is that charges against both Dr. Chris Kuhne and Dr. Bill Rea still haven't been resolved. Despite the fact that there is overwhelming evidence that the body that pursued them was obscenely corrupt their cases are now in the Texas state court system. (that's because their appeals were exhausted through the TMB system) These cases continue to be a mental, emotional, and financial drain on all the doctors that have been targeted. It is impossible to know for sure just how many doctors were the victims of the kind of sham peer review that these two were, and unfortunately most will never have their stories told.

These two cases, along with that of Dr. Shirley Pigott, are likely to open up a pandora's box of corruption throughout the medical system that infects the state of Texas. I have only begun to discover it all and I will continue to report on it.

Read the conclusion to this series here.