Lawsuit over Dr. Shaknovsky’s wrong-site liver surgery: Pandora’s Box Opened

As unbelievable as it is that a surgeon could mistakenly remove a man’s liver instead of his spleen, the lawsuit filed over the alleged wrongful death of 70-year-old Bill Bryan says that his fatal operation is just the latest in a series of surgical errors by the same surgeon enabled by a system geared to protect doctors. 

 According to the lawsuit filed by Beverly Bryan, Bill’s widow, what seems like a shocking, incredulous, and one-in-a million type of blunder that happened to her husband, was part of a larger pattern of mishaps, near misses, and mistakes that were either never reported or under reported. 

 The lawsuit says it was Ascension Sacred Heart’s reporting system that created the culture which led to Bill Bryan’s tragic death, a culture that minimized and overlooked adverse events like wrong-site surgeries and repeated mistakes by doctors including an orthopedic surgeon, Dr. David Heekin. 

 He worked for a hospital in Jacksonville, Florida, under the same owner and is facing 522 lawsuits for a range of surgical errors including some that resulted in amputation. 

 Join us as we discuss the details in this episode of the Gulf Coast Confidential podcast, “Lawsuit over Dr. Shaknovsky’s wrong-site liver surgery: Pandora’s Box Opened.”