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Doctor Death: The Crimes of Dr Jayant Patel

From the day we’re born, brought into the world with the help of a raft of doctors, nurses and midwives, we’re taught that we can trust the medical profession. After all, they’re the ones we turn to when we’re sick and at our most fragile. They make the lives of our dying friends and family as comfortable as possible. They even have a seemingly endless supply of lollipops for unwell children. And when they have to deliver bad news, they know just how to frame it.

Sure, they make mistakes – after all, they’re only human, albeit very well-paid humans. But it’s generally impossible to imagine a family member or loved one dying in hospital not because of complications, but because of the incompetence of their trusted medical professional – that was, until Dr Jayant Patel hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons.

The Indian-born US citizen allegedly contributed to the deaths of as many as 87 patients while practising in Australia, as well as regularly instigating unnecessary amputations, mutilating healthy organs and leaving surgical instruments inside patients after sewing them up. It’s fair to say the moniker Doctor Death was a well-earned one for Patel.

And the next time you complain about the cost of medicine, health insurance or even a simple visit to a general practitioner, think about this – while Patel was earning his murderous nickname, he was pulling in $200,000 a year as the Director of Surgery at the Bundaberg Base Hospital in Queensland.

He secured the job thanks to an incredibly strong résumé – not that his credentials were ever checked. They were, however, as you would probably expect, all dodgy. But Bundaberg Base Hospital wouldn’t have even had to check his quoted accomplishments with the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons – a simple Google search would have uncovered an unfortunate history of gross negligence through US hospitals where he had been employed.

Indeed, Patel had also been banned from performing surgery in his home country. In a perfect world, he would never have even been granted a second interview – let alone been accepted for a job with such responsibility. But the medical industry in Australia isn’t perfect, and they needed a surgeon in Bundaberg. Sadly for his victims and their families, Patel was it.

No matter how many complaints they received about their Director, though, the hospital ignored them. Then one day, one nurse became so fed up with the situation that she had no choice but to go public. After telling of the scrappy workmanship she had witnessed, the brave healthcare provider was threatened with jail and temporarily blacklisted from her profession.

Thankfully, things eventually turned around for Toni Hoffman. She may have found herself unemployed for a time, but the nurse was eventually made an Australian of the Year ‘Local Hero’ in 2006, and a Member of the Order of Australia in the 2007 Queen’s Birthday Honours List.

Of course, the story really starts when Patel turned up for work at Bundaberg on 1 April 2003. Things began to go very wrong not long afterwards. Hospital administration started to receive complaints from senior medical staff that the new Director of Surgery wasn’t following proper procedure. They noted a general lack of care, and cited poor knowledge of normal surgery skills. Disturbingly, they also complained that he was trying to run the hospital like a conveyor belt – getting patients in and out as quickly as possible, with little concern for their condition. There were even issues with basic hygiene procedures – Patel was known to not wash his hands between operations at times.

Still, nothing was ever done about the ongoing complaints. Hospital administration seemed to be of the opinion that as long as the money was coming in, it was best to turn a blind eye to the problems. After all, Patel was bringing in much-needed profits – and no one can argue with good cash flow. Though the victims of Patel’s incompetence probably wouldn’t really care too much about how well lined the coffers of the hospital became.

In his two years at Bundaberg Base Hospital, Patel performed almost 900 operations – and the results were far from spectacular. Indeed, many of the botched procedures sound like the stuff of horror films. One time, Patel is said to have tried to drain fluid from a sac near a patient’s heart by stabbing him 50 times in the chest. The unwarranted frenzy had his fellow medical staff fleeing the scene traumatised. Another story sees a surgical procedure going wrong and Patel cutting a hole in the patient’s chest to drain fluid – without the use of anaesthetic.

On another occasion, Patel allegedly decided that a patient’s life support system should be switched off simply because he needed the bed for another patient. Internal bleeding caused the death of another patient, who passed away after Patel bungled a procedure he claimed to have performed many times before. To witnesses, though, it was obvious he didn’t have a clue what he was supposed to be doing.

These bungles were sadly the rule rather than the exception, and they went on for almost two years, until February 2005, when Queensland Health realised they simply had no choice – they had to do something about the constant complaints from staff and relatives of patients who had either died or suffered serious repercussions as a result of Patel’s poor performance.

The situation came to a head when Toni Hofmann went to the press, frustrated that the ongoing complaints were falling on deaf ears. This resulted in the National Party’s Rob Messenger bringing up the matter in Parliament. From there, the case finally received the attention it deserved. Patel was about to be investigated – theoretically.

But two years to the day after he started work at the hospital, on 1 April 2005, Patel flew business class home to the US at the expense of the Bundaberg Base Hospital. In his luggage he had a reference from his bosses and a letter of thanks from Queensland Health for his devoted service to the sick, as well as the blessing of then Queensland Premier Peter Beattie.

Leaving a path of death, misery and despair in his wake, it seemed Patel had got away clean of at least a dozen deaths and many more allegations of professional neglect. The police hadn’t even tried to detain him, let alone confiscate his passport to stop him leaving the country until an investigation could be mounted.

Patel had been out of the country, seemingly home free, for a month before Queensland’s Public Hospitals Commission of Inquiry started looking into the man the newspapers now referred to as Dr Death. It was May 2005 and their job was to determine if Patel had contributed to the deaths at Bundaberg Hospital. They also wanted to know why authorities failed to check the dubious credentials he presented, and why it took so long to act on the numerous complaints. The facts presented to the Commission left everyone involved in shock.

In pure numbers alone, the 87 deaths linked to Patel in his two-year tenure at Bundaberg was enough of a concern – not to mention the vast number of serious injuries. But once the gruesome details of the stories came out, that shock turned to revulsion.

The Commission heard about a young man left impotent and urinating through his rectum thanks to a 30 centimetre surgical clamp embedded in his abdomen, and a 15-year-old boy whose leg had to be amputated as a result of Patel’s poor judgement. Other gut-churning tales included Patel simply performing the wrong operations and leaving patients damaged for life. Nurses had even gone as far as to hide patients they knew personally – be they family or friends – from Patel so that he couldn’t injure their loved ones. In short, the Commission heard that Patel wasn’t just bad at his job – he was a threat to the life of any patient he came in contact with.

The Commission wrapped in November 2005, after seven months of inquiry. It found that Patel had contributed to the deaths of 17 patients, and declared that he should be charged with manslaughter, grievous bodily harm, assault and fraud. As a result, warrants were taken out for the arrest of the multimillionaire Patel currently living a life of luxury in a mansion in the US city of Portland, Oregon.

An Australian extradition order was taken out and Patel was taken into custody in March 2008. Two Queensland police officers escorted him back to Australia in July 2008. But despite facing 13 charges including manslaughter, grievous bodily harm and fraud, Patel declared that he had no case to answer. He was then ordered to surrender his passport before being released on $20,000 bail.

The trial of Dr Jayant Patel began in July 2010 in the Brisbane Supreme Court. After 14 weeks of evidence and summations, the 60-year-old was sentenced to seven years’ jail for each of three counts of manslaughter, and three years for grievous bodily harm. Sadly for the families and loved ones of the dead and butchered, all of the terms are to be served concurrently. That means Dr Death could spend as little as three and a half years behind bars.

No one has ever been held fully responsible for not checking out Dr Patel’s alleged credentials before he was let loose on the unsuspecting patients of the Bundaberg Base Hospital.