Inset: Dr. Sudesh Ebenezer (McLaren Health Care/Insight Institute of Neurosurgery & Neuroscience). Background: The Hurley Medical Center in Flint, Mich., where Dr. Sudesh Ebenezer says staff “lost track” of a 12-month-old baby who later died (Google Maps).
A Michigan neurosurgeon is suing a local hospital that he claims “retaliated” against him for voicing “grave concerns” regarding patient safety after its medical staff “lost track” of a 12-month-old baby who ended up dying, his lawsuit says.
Dr. Sudesh Ebenezer, an independent contractor, has accused the Hurley Medical Center in Flint of wrongly removing him from his position on its Neurosurgery Trauma Panel and call schedule following the 2022 incident.
Ebenezer”s agreement with his direct employer, Shah Practice Group at the Insight Institute of Neurosurgery and Neuroscience, which contracted him out to HMC — a “governmental entity” — was found to have been breached. As a result, his income was cut “by more than sixteen times” what it was, resulting in “financial loss and reputational harm,” according to Ebenezer’s complaint, which was filed last Monday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.
“On the evening of December 9, 2022, [Ebenezer] was called to help provide treatment to a 12-month-old child who had been admitted with a traumatic head injury,” the complaint says. “As Plaintiff prepared for surgery, Hurley’s trauma staff notified him that his surgery was cancelled because the child had been medically evacuated to another hospital. In reality, the child was still at Hurley — staff had simply lost track of the patient.”
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Ebenezer claims he arrived that night and was “alarmed” because numerous routine diagnostic testing and radiological analysis had yet to be performed. This allegedly prevented him from “immediately operating” on the child, per the complaint.
“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.
