Blind Eye: The Terrifying Story of a Doctor Who Got Away With Murder by James B. Stewart

told Swango that a committee would be meeting that evening to consider his status, and suggested he wait outside for the results.
    Dr. Carey also spoke to Dr. Hunt, the head of neurosurgery, who had admitted Swango to the residency program. Goodman was widely viewed as Hunt’s protégé, though Hunt was more personable and outgoing. Hunt, too, was a graduate of Ohio State’s medical school, and was a Columbus native. Hunt had been married for years to Charlotte Curtis, long the highest-ranking woman at The New York Times , a member of the paper’s editorial board. After her death he married Carole Miller, a former resident of his who had joined the neurosurgery staff at Ohio State. Hunt had long taken a professional interest in the residents’ program; as a member of the American Board of Neurological Surgery, he was in charge of graduate medical education. Hunt was urbane and nationally known, spending time in New York and at his summer home on the coast of Maine.
    Both Hunt and Carey were aware of some cases at other hospitals in which residents sued after being fired and the hospitals were ordered to reinstate them. They didn’t want to be sued by Swango as a result of unfounded charges and nurses’ gossip, and then be ordered to reinstate him.
    Hunt immediately called Cramp, the hospital’s executive director, and said a lawyer should attend that evening’s meeting. Hunt thus appears to have been the first person involved in the matter who recognized that the situation might threaten Ohio State with possible legal liability. Besides fears of a lawsuit by Swango, there were also possible suits by patients to consider.
    The questions about Swango coincided with what is generally referred to as the second malpractice insurance “crisis.” The first of these occurred in the mid-1970s, when doctors’ insurance premiums shot up, on average, 500 percent. During the second “crisis,” in the mid-1980s, the U.S. General Accounting Office reported that malpractice insurance costs for physicians nearly doubled between 1983 and 1985, rising from $2.5 billion to $4.7 billion. The St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Company, the largest underwriter of medical malpractice insurance, reported a 55 percent increase in claims from 1980 to 1984. And the GAO reported that damage awards increased over 100 percent in some states in the same period. This “crisis” received enormous publicity, especially in the medical press, and fueled intense concern and resentment on the part of many doctors.
    The issue of potential legal liability was especially sensitive at Ohio State, because, as a large state-financed and taxpayer-supported institution, the university was largely self-insured. Though individual doctors carried malpractice insurance and were subject to the explosion in premium costs, judgments against the hospitals, the medical school, or the university itself were paid by the university, which meant the money ultimately came out of taxpayers’ pockets. Because of Ohio State’s unusual status, the office of the Ohio attorney general, an elected official, served as the university’s lawyer. One assistant attorney general, Robert Holder, maintained an office on the Ohio State campus and worked full-time on university matters, including issues at the medical college. Indeed, Holder and Tzagournis had worked closely together and had becomefriends. Cramp called Holder, who was out that day. He then called Richard Jackson, vice president of the university for business and finance. Jackson in turn asked Alphonse Cincione, a probate lawyer with a downtown Columbus law firm, to represent the university at the meeting.
    The group convened at 6:30 that evening in a large conference room at the university hospital. Tzagournis did not attend, nor did Michael Whitcomb, the hospital’s medical director, whom no one had been able to reach. Dickson was there as head of nursing, as were hospital administrators Cramp and Boyanowski.