A California state senator and the nonprofit group Consumer Watchdog are pushing for the California Medical Board to include on physicians' profiles any pending investigations into cases where a patient died or was seriously harmed, ABC affiliate 10News reported March 10.
At the center of the push is a criminal case in which surgeon Carlos Chacon, MD, and Heather Lang, RN, were charged with involuntary manslaughter over the death of a patient at Dr. Chacon's Divino Plastic Surgery Center in Bonita, Calif.
Despite the charges, Dr. Chacon and Ms. Lang have been allowed to continue practicing medicine without notifying their patients, the report said.
"I think that there's a big problem and a big concern here," State Senator Melissa Hurtado told 10News.
The patient died in 2018, but nothing about the case was available for the public to view on the Medical Board of California's website until more than three years later when the criminal charges were filed in December 2021, the report said.
"The system that the Medical Board has in place is not adequate and it shouldn't take three years, because three years is really a matter of life or death for not just one but for many patients," Ms. Hurtado told 10News.
Ms. Lang allegedly sedated the patient despite not having the proper training to do so. Dr. Chacon and Ms. Lang are also accused of ordering an unlicensed medical assistant to inject medication into the patient's IV during surgery.
The California Medical Board's report claims Dr. Chacon admitted prior to surgery that "there was no discussion with [the patient] regarding the absence of an anesthesiologist."
The patient reportedly went into cardiac arrest during her Dec. 19, 2018, surgery, but Dr. Chacon did not immediately call 911 "even as [she] started to make gurgling noises and exhibit seizure-like activity," the medical board's report stated, according to 10News.
"There's an urgent need for the Medical Board of California to speed up the pace of their investigations and to prioritize investigations that involve serious negligence that caused long lasting harm, and as happened in this case, death," Consumer Watchdog Executive Director Carmen Balber said, according to 10News.