Waking up blind

the long version

In the early 1980s, professors at a highly-respected academic medical center began to notice problems with their gifted chairman, a powerful figure on campus. His patients complained of long delays and rushed exams. His bills to medicare and insurance companies were suspect. Too often, the tissue that he removed from patient's eyes showed no sign of the disease that he had diagnosed. Finally on a typically rushed day, he operated on the wrong eye of a patient, who eventually went blind. A departmental committee investigation found improper billing, examples of patients' eyes harmed by neglect and multiple other problems. Lawsuits and continued complaints from two faculty whistleblowers prompted a university ethics investigation. The result: exoneration for the chairman and a reprimand for one whistleblower. Only after a national specialty society ethics investigation and even more lawsuits was the chairman forced to resign.