A Texas doctor who has been charged with inserting drugs into IV bags that resulted in the death of a colleague and roughly a dozen patients experiencing medical issues may have done it on purpose because he was dissatisfied that his surgical centre was looking into him.
Wednesday marked one week since the Texas Medical Board suspended Dr. Raynaldo Rivera Ortiz Jr.’s licence.
His continued medical practise, according to the board, “poses a continuous hazard to the public welfare.”
Dr. Melanie Kaspar, 55, an anesthesiologist at Surgicare North Dallas, died in June from a cardiac arrest minutes after injecting herself with an IV bag she had brought home from work. Dallas police started an investigation into her death, and Ortiz was arrested as a result.
Her body had the same substance that Ortiz handled for IV bags, according to a toxicology study.
According to the Medical Board’s investigation, Ortiz had handled the IV bag that killed Kaspar.
It stated: “On June 21, 2022, a colleague doctor from the Surgicare facility brought one of the IV bags home with her when she was ill to rehydrate. When she put the IV at home, she almost immediately suffered a heart attack and died.
The bags were discovered to have small holes in them and to have been spiked with an anaesthetic that is fatal if administered intravenously, according to the authorities, who claimed that video footage showed Dr. Raynaldo Rivera Ortiz Jr., an anesthesiologist at Baylor Scott & White Surgicare North Dallas.
On security film, Ortiz can be seen putting individual IV bags into a warmer outside the operation rooms. According to a report by the Texas Medical Board, investigators discovered that when he placed a bag in the warmer, a patient would have major difficulties soon after.
A closer look revealed small flaws in the plastic wrap covering the IV bags. Despite not being labelled as such, tests on the bags revealed they contained a fatal dosage of the local anaesthetic bupivacaine.
A motivation for Ortiz’s alleged actions is suggested by an affidavit obtained by The Daily Beast.
An investigation and disciplinary action were taken against Ortiz earlier this year after a patient who was under his care during a routine surgery stopped breathing.
The 59-year-old anesthesiologist is scheduled to appear in court for the first time on Friday in connection with several charges, including tampering with a consumer product resulting in death and/or severe bodily damage.
According to the affidavit, there seems to be a connection between Ortiz’s scrutiny for medical mistakes and the bad occurrences impacting other anesthesiologists’ patients at the surgical centre after investigations.
When a patient named G.A. stopped breathing in May, the surgery started its first examination.
Through failing to keep the patient’s airway open and failing to record crucial details of the event, Ortiz “deviated from the standard of care,” according to the surgeon.
Aware of the inquiry into how he handled the situation, Ortiz communicated his displeasure by telling a different doctor that he felt the centre was trying to “crucify” him.
According to the affidavit that the Beast has read, Ortiz’s financial situation would be “devastating” if he lost his position at the centre.
Furthering its probe into Ortiz, The Daily Beast discovered how the state medical board censured him when he accidentally shot his neighbor’s dog in 2018.
He allegedly has a “history of aggression towards women,” according to the board.
Additionally, the board censured Ortiz for failing “to satisfy the standard of care for one patient” at North Garland Surgery Center in November 2020.
After Ortiz administered anaesthetic, a patient required CPR and had to be sent to the hospital via ambulance.
The Board also observed that Ortiz’s tampering looked to be the cause of an event that occurred two months later, when an 18-year-old male again narrowly avoided death while being connected to the IV during a routine operation.
Testing was also done on the leftover IV bag contents that were administered to a patient who was generally healthy but had a heart attack during a routine procedure. According to the testing, the IV fluid included medications that, when administered intravenously, may and would be lethal.
The boy’s blood pressure dramatically increased over the course of the procedure, and he was sent straight to critical care. Before leaving the hospital, he was kept on a ventilator for a week.
Two IV bags used during the teen’s operation were retrieved by the authorities, and several of them had minor puncture holes.
When the fluid was examined under a microscope, it was discovered to include the drugs bupivacaine and lidocaine as well as the hormone epinephrine, or adrenaline, which caused his “heart to beat out of control and his blood pressure to jump to roughly 200/150.”
According to the affidavit, the facility connected the event with Kaspar and the juvenile and came to the conclusion that both incidents were “likely not isolated and were likely part of a pattern of purposeful adulteration of IV bags used for procedures.”
The medical staff “found that there had been roughly 10 such suspected cases since late May 2022 when patients had unanticipated cardiovascular problems after apparently routine procedures.”
Patients who required a second IV bag from the “warmer,” which raises the temperature of the bags used during surgery, also seemed to have problems.
Other cardiovascular episodes that may have included compromised IV bags occurred on or around July 7, 15, and 18 as well as August 1, 4, and 9.
Additionally, it was noticed that there were no problems between July 23 and July 28 while Ortiz was on vacation, but that upon his return, cardiac episodes abruptly increased once again.
In surveillance video from August, Ortiz can be seen exiting a surgery room while holding an IV and moving through a warmer.
After rapidly putting the IV bag into the warmer, Ortiz “turned” and “looked both ways” in the corridor before hurriedly leaving.
The affidavit states, “Shortly after, Ortiz opened the warmer and peeked inside, then hastily closed the warmer.”
When a woman having cosmetic surgery received an IV bag from the warmer, she “experienced acute hypertension and cardiac arrhythmias” and had to be sent to the hospital.
Other incidents when Ortiz placed an IV bag in the warmer and the patient subsequently had high blood pressure or other medical issues were also recorded.
The Ortiz would sometimes retrieve his own IV bag from the warmer to use in surgery while shoving another bag provided by the nurse aside, according to a nurse who also described these “strange” occasions.
The nurse said that Ortiz’s behaviour was uncommon for the hospital since physicians normally didn’t get their own IV bags.
When announcing Ortiz’s accusations, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Chad Meacham noted that the doctor had “subtly put heart-stopping medications into patient IV bags, decimating the Hippocratic oath.”
“A single instance of what seems to be purposeful patient injury would be troubling; numerous instances are absolutely troubling.”
Ortiz earned his medical degree from the University of Texas Medical Branch School of Medicine in 1989, and in 1993, he finished his anaesthesia residency. How long he has worked at Surgicare North Dallas is unknown.
Ortiz was deemed a “continued menace to the public welfare” by the Medical Board.
According to the report, “Dr. Ortiz was a subject of an ongoing criminal investigation as a result of major cardiac issues and one patient’s death associated with Ortiz’s attendance at the Baylor Scott & White Surgicare North Dallas facility from May through September 2022.”
Following the discovery of an IV bag that “looked to have been contaminated,” Surgicare North Dallas suspended operations in recent weeks, the institution stated in a statement.
When DailyMail.com approached the hospital for comment, they were unable to do so.
The surgical center’s owner, Baylor Scott and White, was likewise unreachable but had previously said in a statement that it was cooperating with the inquiry.
There is nothing more essential than the safety and well-being of our patients, the statement stated, adding that “we remain dedicated on aiding investigators.”
Kaspar was remembered in an obituary as a “loving” guy who always enjoyed life to the utmost.
“Mel cannot be effectively expressed in words.” The obituary said that she was a whirling dervish who did nothing half-heartedly.
Melanie was a person of dignity and honesty. She was true to herself and didn’t apologise for it. She had a unique sense of style.
She was praised as a committed and kind doctor who always understood how to put patients at rest in several comments on another obituary.
Her former coworker described her as a “very compassionate anesthesiologist” and said that she “loved her profession” and “touched so many lives” while working in the operating room.