Dear Sir,
What became of Surgery Host, the medical services provider that came to Lakeside with such a flourish a couple of years ago? I searched for them but gave up when I discovered that they had closed shop locally and withdrawn to Guadalajara, only to subsequently disappear from there too.
I had searched in vain, but needed to track down Doctor Francisco Arroyo Paz and his team of orthopedic surgeons: doctors Jorge Nicolas Valladeres Lozada, Gustavo Jose Valladeres Colado and Jorge Arturo Barba Martin, as well as Lorena Rule, the then-office manager of Surgery Host, who had recommended Dr. Arroyo as “the best surgeon in Guadalajara.” They were all key players in the malpractice complaint that I had filed with CAMEJAL, the commission that deals with medical malpractice in Jalisco.
However, my lawyer was able to track down the players and proceed to file the complaint. The first step taken by CAMEJAL, after they had heard my story and I had submitted my claim, was to interview the individual doctors and get their version of past events. From there, we were all called to a conciliation session at the offices of the commission. Amazingly, the quartet and their lawyer denied any responsibility or fault in their procedures – paying no regard for the fact that the first hip replacement operation had to be repeated the next day because the prosthesis had separated overnight, denying the fact that the post-operation recovery period was extensive and painful (Dr. Arroyo insisted that everything was normal and that the huge water blisters and incontinence were nothing compared to some of his other patients) and they refuted the need for a second opinion or further surgeries to remove the suspect prosthesis. To repair the damaged bone and purge the infection that was discovered around the area of the original incisions actually required two more surgeries (by a different orthopedic surgeon) in order to replace the inferior prosthesis with an appropriate one.
From the failed conciliation session, we moved on to arbitration, all of this taking more time and more expense, but at the arbitration, once again, the quarrelsome quartet and their lawyer stated, one after the other, that they had no intention of cooperating with the arbitrator because it was not in their best interest to do so, and left the room.
From that surprising turn of events, I have moved on from CAMEJAL and am preparing to take the issue to civil court. CAMEJAL provides an excellent service, but, in the final analysis, they have little authority when push comes to shove. Their mission is to get a settlement without needing to go public.
So I will push on, a little bruised but wiser, and take my chances for reasonable compensation through the legal system, knowing full well that what friends and associates describe as a culture of bribery and corruption might well be accurate. But bad doctors and bad procedures, as well as “fly-by-night” companies such as Surgery Host must be recognized for what they are and malpractices must be corrected by whatever means. We live to fight another day!
Frank Slater