Disciplinary hearings for a former cardiologist who injected a dying patient with a drug that may have killed him concluded Thursday with the state’s attorney’s office recommending that the doctor’s license be suspended indefinitely.
In addition, attorneys for the Illinois Department of Professional Regulation, which licenses physicians, urged the board to require Dr. R. Lance Wilson to undergo a mental and physical examination if he decides to petition the board for his license in the future.
Wilson, whose license was suspended after the incident last year at Olympia Fields Osteopathic Hospital, stormed out of the hearings Wednesday, saying the board had implied he had euthanized his patient. The hearings continued without Wilson and his attorneys present.
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On Thursday, Wilson’s attorney, Tom Zimmerman, returned to ask for a continuance but was turned down.
“Where does it end?” said hearing officer Phillip Howe. “When can I conclude this hearing?”
Later Thursday, Zimmerman went before U.S. District Judge George Lindberg to request a stay of the state hearings. He was met by attorneys from the state board and the Illinois attorney general’s office, who informed Lindberg that the hearings had ended.
Howe has 30 days to make a recommendation to the full state medical board, which then will have 60 days to make a recommendation to the director, who will make the final ruling.
Wilson could petition for a rehearing after the full board makes its recommendation.
Meanwhile, the attorney general’s office is representing the board in a lawsuit Wilson filed last month accusing the board and its former director, Nikki Zollar, of violating his civil rights by suspending his license.
Lindberg is scheduled to review motions from both sides on Tuesday. The state is asking him to dismiss the lawsuit. Wilson’s attorneys are seeking a preliminary injunction against the state board that would give the federal court jurisdiction to rule on the status of Wilson’s license.
Zimmerman alleges that the state board hearings were unfair and predetermined to impose punishment. On Thursday, he accused the board of concluding the hearings early “by design.”
“They cut their case short to end this thing in an effort to prevent us from having a hearing that the federal court could put a stop to,” he said.
Tony Sanders, a spokesman for the state board, rejected that claim.
“I don’t know how they can claim they didn’t get a fair hearing,” he said. “They don’t know what the hearing officer is going to say. They didn’t even take advantage of the opportunity to present an adequate defense by getting up and storming out.”
Michael Lyons, attorney for the state board, said Wednesday that the state planned to call Dr. Mitra Kalelkar, the deputy Cook County medical examiner who ruled that the death of Wilson’s patient, Henry Taylor, was a homicide.
But the state board rested its case with testimony from Taylor’s attending physician, a clinical ethicist and four hospital nurses, including the one present during Taylor’s death.
Taylor, who had myriad health problems, suffered from a rare syndrome that caused his windpipe to collapse, asphyxiating him, on Sept. 30, 1998.
Kalelkar and the medical examiner’s office, along with Chief Medical Examiner Edmund Donoghue and the state board’s investigator, are also named in Wilson’s federal lawsuit.
Kalelkar ruled Taylor’s death a homicide after learning that he died after Wilson administered a large dose of potassium chloride.
Wilson testified earlier this week that he didn’t intend to kill Taylor but only to make him unconscious so he would not suffer.
During his closing argument on Thursday, Goldberg said that potassium chloride is not recognized as a pain reliever by the medical community. It is one of the drugs used in lethal injections in Illinois.
“Dr. Wilson wants to be judged by the intentions he said he had. And yet, there’s not one bit of evidence to indicate those intentions exist,” Goldberg said.
According to Wilson, death was imminent for Taylor, who refused to be hooked up to a respirator in his final moments. He testified that Taylor died before the injection could take effect.
But Goldberg said Thursday that it doesn’t matter whether the injection killed Taylor or if he died of his ailments.
“It is unethical, unprofessional and dishonorable conduct to inject a patient with a lethal drug, period,” Goldberg said.
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