Yet another physician has come forward with allegations against Dr. Jeffrey Weisz, who recently lost his position as president and executive medical director of the 1,300 physician group at Kaiser Permanente. Since then he’s joined Cotter and Associates, Inc., an independent compensation, benefits and human resources management consulting firms, as a managing principal and consulting physician.
Currently, San Francisco attorney Ted Mathews is pursuing litigation against Weisz brought by two physicians who worked at Kaiser in Portland -- Drs. Radhika Breaden and Jennifer Lycette -- who've filed multi-million dollar lawsuits alleging gender discrimination and wrongful discharge, which are now in the discovery and deposition stage.
Also, Deborah Hodges, who had been the longtime human resources director at Kaiser, was supposedly driven out by Weisz, and, for a time, those functions were assumed by Katharine Traunweiser, who was executive director of ambulatory care services, according to confidential sources. Since then, Jan John has become its human resource business manager and executive consultant.
Meanwhile, Dr. Stefanie Feldman, who had been chief of the plastic surgery department at Kaiser’s southern California office in Woodland Hills, was forced to step down following an eye surgery that went awry. She blames Weisz for refusing to let her be seen by a retinal specialist outside the Kaiser system. At that time, Weisz was executive medical director and chairman of the board for the Southern California Permanente Medical Group, a position he held for eight years before moving to Portland in 2011.
Feldman found herself with a macular hole, a condition typically seen in elderly people, and asked several times to be seen by an ophthalmologist experienced in performing retinal surgery. But each time, Weisz turned down her request, telling her it was too expensive, and that he wouldn’t allow outside referrals.
Forced to be seen by a Kaiser surgeon, who was inexperienced with retinal tears, Feldman recalls waking up during the procedure, realizing something had gone terribly wrong, after hearing a lot of screaming going on.
Blinded in one eye following the surgery, she reluctantly gave up her plastic surgery practice and left Kaiser. “I knew then I’d be retaliated by Jeff, that’s how he works, and decided to quit because I was a liability.” She ended up filing a lawsuit, which went into arbitration, but lost her case.
Allegations Against Weisz
In Oregon, Weisz “found ways to minimize payrolls by shrinking staff while patient loads skyrocketed, often leaving the remaining staff members trying to cope with impossible patient care demands, which ultimately harmed Kaiser’s patients,” according to Mathews, who represents Breaden and Lycette.
Breaden joined Kaiser as an internist in 2000, and started focusing on sleep medicine in 2007. She contends that Weisz shouted at her, humiliating her in front of her peers, taking away vacation time, attempting to deny her corneal transplant and excluding her from department activities.
Her lawsuit alleges that Weisz’ decision to maximize profits by decreasing outside referrals created a zero-tolerance policy for patients needing to be seen by physicians outside the Kaiser setting, and that decision jeopardized the lives of many patients.
“Before Dr. Weisz’ arrival, Kaiser had a culture of open dialogue and putting patient care first,” her lawsuit alleges. “The primary goal of all discussions was preservation and improvement of the quality of patient care.”
Breaden found it difficult to help her patients find adequate treatment at sleep medicine clinics because they were restricted to the Kaiser facility and often had to drive long distances after being evaluated and treated were in danger of getting in sleep-related vehicle accidents.
Sharing her concerns led to Breaden being “retaliated against, humiliated and ostracized for interfering with Kaiser’s attempts to make as much money as possible at the expense of patient care,” her lawsuit alleges, yet Breaden refused to remain silent.
Kaiser’s reluctance to allow patients to seek treatment at outside clinics led, she says, to at least one motor vehicle accident where a sleep medicine patient fell asleep while driving home to Salem from Kaiser Sunnyside Medical Center, resulting in severe injuries.
Breaden insists she was repeatedly humiliated, forced to provide substandard care and was put in a position where she could have violated the law. In August 2012, she lost her job and is asking for $5 million in non-economic damages and $4 million in economic damages.
Profit margin paramount
The lawsuit filed by Lycette who specializes in hematology and medical oncology, shares many of the same issues, saying Weisz was more concerned with maximizing profits.
For her part, Lycette had reported concerns about understaffing and was told by the chief of medical oncology that she was being emotional and her part-time position was being eliminated. This occurred after she had been highly praised for doing well at her job, had a high patient load, was highly productive, had high patient satisfaction cores and never received discipline, according to her lawsuit.
Before joining Kaiser’s staff in 2006, Lycette’s colleagues had assured her that they had never experienced any limitations on treatment protocols and could refer patients for outside expert consultation or to clinical trials. Lycette says she needed such assurances after fearing “Kaiser would reject her patients from life-saving clinical trials or expert consultations just to increase profit,” but was told that was not the case.
After Weisz came on board, however, things changed drastically, she alleges, and he demanded that medical oncologists perform bone marrow biopsies during a patient’s initial consultation, telling Lycette she should rush through the patient on their first visit to maximize profits.
When Lycette challenged his authority, saying his demands were not feasible and were outdated, Weisz began shouting at her in angry and threatening manner which led Lycette to tell Weisz she had more knowledge than he had about the current practice of medical oncology, and had the highest patient satisfaction rating in the department at 89 percent.
Later, in February 2013, Weisz announced that all part-time positions in the department would be eliminated even if that would disproportionately affect the number of women in the department – among them Dr. Phoebe Trubowitiz and Dr. Kathleen Kemmer. Since then, Lycette claims that other outstanding female physicians have resigned rather than be forced to endure further humiliation and pain or be fired – including Kemmer, Trubowitz,and Drs. Tarun Bains and Michele Chernesky.
Lycette, who resigned in April 2013 because of her oath to do no harm and her belief that Kaiser policies were "making patients suffer," is asking for $5 million in noneconomic and $2 million in economic damage.
Diane can be reached at [email protected].
