Cedars-Sinai hit with $4.7 million payment to surgeon

    Cedars-Sinai Medical Center has been ordered to pay $4.7 million to one of its former surgeons, who had to abort a brain tumor operation in 2005, after a special pair of forceps used in the operation proved unusable.

      Dr. Hrayr Shahinian, on the hospital’s medical staff since 1996 but who has not performed surgery there since 2005, charged that no backup forceps were available, reflecting a long-standing failure by management to provide sufficient spare instruments to surgeons. Cedars-Sinai spokesman Richard Elbaum described the Shahinian case as unique, saying that the surgeon insisted on using his own special custom-made forceps, despite problems with the instrument in previous operations he performed.
   
      To assure patient safety, the hospital had banned use of the custom forceps, Elbaum said.

    Shortly after performing the tumor operation, Shahinian left Cedars-Sinai, saying that he could not work under the conditions imposed by the hospital management.

To judge the dispute, both sides chose arbitrator Linda Klibanow, who apparently put more credence in Shahinian’s version and granted him the $4.7 million award.

Elbaum said the hospital would appeal the decision, but whatever the ultimate outcome, the ruling becomes one more in a series of incidents that have brought bad publicity for the prestigious medical center.

Last fall, 260 patients received large overdoses of radiation. In 2007, the newborn twins of actor Dennis Quaid were given 1,000 times their prescribed dosage of a blood thinner.

Jewish philanthropists, who continue to be its primary supporters, including numerous Hollywood celebrities, founded Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

Its forerunner was established in 1902, mainly to provide free treatment for tuberculosis-stricken Jewish workers from the sweatshops of New York and other East Coast cities.

Shahinian was also embroiled on another legal front last week as he was ordered to pay $800,000 to a Maryland patient in a malpractice case.

In levying the penalty, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge J. Stephen Czuleger said that Shahinian committed fraud when he performed an inappropriate surgery on the Maryland patient and then altered a pathology report to cover up his failure to remove a tumor.