Texas Senate House and Human Service Committee, Interim Hearing, estimony of Larry Likover, M.D.

Larry Likover, M.D.
May 12, 2010

Senators:

Thank you for the opportunity to visit with you today. My name is Larry Likeover. I am an orthopedic surgeon, and have been practicing in Houston for the past xx years. I am here today to ask for your help in providing some transparency to the complaint processes of the Texas Medical Board – specifically, the abuse of the confidentiality protections afforded complainants.

Recently, I had a confidential (anonymous) complaint filed with the TMB, listing 32 of my surgical patients. Through some investigation I was able to discover that the complaint was filed by one of my competitors at the hospital. Most the cases were revision knee replacement cases that I performed over a period of several years. “Revision” means that an implant failed for one reason or the other. “Revision” also could infer that there is a problem from the first surgery, but most of the time the failure is due to wearing out of the device.

The medical board has requested the charts, x-rays and other material on these 32 cases. I had to retain legal counsel to deal with this massive document request and to help defend myself. This has already cost me both financially, for legal fees, and in terms of time away from my practice and my family. So far, I have not been asked to attend an Informal Settlement Conference.

In my opinion there are two problems here:

The vast majority of these patients are very happy with the care I gave and would be shocked and offended to know that their name was used in a complaint against me. Many of these patients came to me to be fixed and I did not do the first surgery. These folks were successfully fixed by me and I am proud of my work.

The second problem is that the names on this list were illegally obtained by my competitor’s copying down names from my hospital’s operating room schedule or from an x-ray department in my building. Either way, obtaining the names from confidential documents which he has no right to, represents a Federal HIPAA violation subject to both civil and criminal fine and prosecution.

It seems that the Board should have first questioned the physician who sent in these names and asked that person how he obtained them, before pursuing an investigation against me. 

Subsequently, I filed a complaint for unprofessional behavior against the competitor physician who I have determined sent in the names. A fellow physician informed me that this competitor had solicited him to turn over confidential patient names of any of my patients that he might have seen who had a complication or failed implant. This is also a federal HIPAA violation. I subsequently sent the Board an affidavit signed by this fellow physician documenting the attempt of the complaining physician to cause a HIPAA violation by my fellow physician and breech patient confidentiality, Still the Board has declined to take the case or even call the complaining physician to question his behavior. 

The Board is reviewing the wrong physician here. Here the Board has concrete evidence of both civil and criminal violation of Federal law and is
pursuing a confidential complaint against me made by a competitor, while ignoring objective evidence of misbehavior on the part of the complaining physician. This is a good example of what is wrong with the Board’s complaint process.

Whether the problem lies with the Board or the law, I hope you will take some time to address these abuses of the system.

Thank you for allowing me a few minutes to testify.