A California woman has filed a malpractice suit, claiming she suffered life-threatening complications after being misled by a physician into having a procedure done at his surgery center instead of the hospital where she worked.
Liza Lumanlan-Domingo, 42, an RN at Torrance (Calif.) Memorial Medical Center, had a miscarriage at 19 weeks and needed to have the fetus removed. She planned to have the procedure done at Torrance Memorial, but Steven Rosenberg, MD, who has staff privileges at the hospital, wrongly told her that her health insurance wouldn't cover the procedure if she had it done there, she claims. Instead, she says, he steered her to Pacific Coast Surgical Center, also in Torrance, which he co-owns.
Dr. Rosenberg said he would charge Ms. Lumanlan-Domingo and her husband, Darrin Domingo, $2,400, and demanded cash, according to a press release from Taylor & Ring, the Los Angeles law firm representing Ms. Lumanlan-Domingo. During a pre-op meeting the day before the surgery, the couple gave Dr. Rosenberg $800, which he stuffed into his pocket without issuing a receipt, according to news accounts.
When Ms. Lumanlan-Domingo began to bleed profusely shortly after the surgery, Mr. Domingo was dispatched by a nurse to the hospital to fill a prescription for the anti-hemorrhage drug Hemabate, which the surgery center didn't have in stock, according to the plaintiffs. Eventually, Ms. Lumanlan-Domingo was taken by ambulance to the hospital, where she spent several days in intensive care.
The lawsuit, filed against both Dr. Rosenberg and Pacific Coast Surgical Center, seeks unspecified damages for negligence, breach of fiduciary duty, fraud and concealment.
In an e-mail to the Torrance-based Daily Breeze newspaper, Nabil Salem, a lawyer for the surgery center, says, "PCSC explicitly denies any wrongdoing, intentional or otherwise, and expresses that the complaint contains factually incorrect statements and allegations which are without merit."
Dr. Rosenberg and Pacific Coast Surgical Center did not immediately respond to requests for comment by Outpatient Surgery Magazine.