DR. RON VIRMANI

MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

When I received my M.D. from New Jersey Medical School, Newark in 1985, I decided to take up the happy specialty of delivering babies. In 1989, I finished my ob-gyn residency from Temple University Hospital, Philadelphia. I graduated in the top 20% of my senior class. I moved down to Charlotte and started ob-gyn practice, first with a group then solo. I became board certified in ob-gyn.

On December 1, 1994, I scheduled a laser-laparoscopy on a patient to alleviate pelvic pain. At the time of surgery, I inadvertently punctured an artery in her abdomen. I recognized the injury immediately and performed open surgery with the help of a general and a vascular surgeon. The patient went home after a few days stay in the hospital. Many experts later reviewed my case and found that I met the standard of care.

But the Presbyterian hospital used this incident to target me in the worst manner. They initiated a secretive peer-review of all my cases. On September 1, 1995, the CEO of Presbyterian Hospital, Charlotte and chief of the ob-gyn department summoned me to the imposing boardroom of the hospital. They told me that the hospital had peer-reviewed my 102 charts and found 24 of them to be problematic". They would not identify these 24 charts or what the "problems" were with each of them. They told me that I was summarily suspended from the hospital from that very day!

I was the first physician to be suspended from the hospital in 20 years! The reviewers were either my competitors or employees of the hospital or both! This was truly a stab in the back, because I was never given a chance to defend any of those 24 cases. According to the hospitals own by-laws, I should have been given written query for each of those charts. If that were done, they would simply not have been able to suspend me, since there was nothing wrong with the charts. They simply wanted to hush up the matter. In fact, the secretary in the medical staff office offered me the "friendly" advice that I should resign. Had I done that, there would have been no legal recourse.

I hired a lawyer and went through the "fair hearing" process in the hospital, which was a laughable exercise in corporate rubber-stamping. There was nothing "fair" about it. The hospital handpicked the members of the "hearing panel". None of the members of the panel was even an ob-gyn physician. Even though two eminent ob-gyn experts testified in my favor, doctors on the panel voted me down. They were not going to destroy their long-standing relationship with the hospital! Yet, they had enough conscience to write in their opinion:

"The sequence of events as presented leaves the distinct impression that this physician was intimidated. That impression damages the entire community."

I took the hospital to the state court in Mecklenburg county in January 1996. The court determined that the hospital had violated its by-laws and ordered the hospital to perform a new peer-review of my charts. Meanwhile North Carolina Medical Board reviewed my "24 problematic charts" and found them to be satisfactory. Sadly, the Board decided to stay on the sidelines while the hospital continued to decimate my career and drag me from court to court.

The hospital initiated a new review of my charts using two external reviewers but they knew that I would be vindicated. Therefore, they simultaneously appealed to the Court of Appeals in Raleigh, North Carolina against having to do the review. They also went to the State Supreme Court asking for a stay of the ongoing and almost finished external review in February 1997. Beyond all reason and logic, the Supreme Court allowed that to happen. The Court of Appeals ordered in August 1997 that the hospital should indeed give me a new review in accordance with its by-laws.

American Medical Association and North Carolina Medical Society, in fact all medical people and entities in this country support an "external" review of a physician. The by-laws of the hospital allow for an external review of a physician. But the hospital chose to abandon the external review that had been going on. For the second time, the hospital selected internal physicians, employed and otherwise controlled by the hospital, to review my cases. The marching orders were clear for the reviewers; they were to find my charts full of "mistakes". They did and justified the revocation of my privileges.

Dr. E. Albert Reece, chairman and professor at Temple University hospital ob-gyn department reviewed these cases at my request. He and another board certified ob-gyn physician personally testified at a hearing in the hospital in January 1999 that I met the standard of care. Still the hospital would not listen!

I was the first ob-gyn physician of Asian-Indian heritage in the city of Charlotte. I felt that discrimination was the real reason for my exclusion from the hospital. I filed a civil rights suit against the hospital in January 1999. In June 2000, the federal judge ordered the hospital to produce to me all the records of ob-gyn physicians to compare with mine. The hospital is appealing this order to the 4th circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, VA.

I still hold full and unrestricted licenses in North Carolina, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. I have full attending privileges at Carolinas Medical Center, Charlotte. But because of my suspension from the hospital and entry of this information in the NPDB, I have been unable to do ob-gyn work for several years. I had to close my practice in May 1997. My skills have doubtlessly gone down. My career and social life have been devastated.

While the hospital has used a million dollars of public money to keep a good doctor from serving the public, blatantly violated its own by-laws, the Joint Commission for Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) has not questioned the hospital to my knowledge. Many doctors, who have committed much bigger "errors", have continued to practice there in perfect comfort.


Ron A. Virmani, M.D.
4626 Charlestown Manor Drive
Charlotte NC 28211
704-362-2240 (P)
704-362-5702 (F)