Dispute case leads to closing of transplant programs

A bitter professional dispute has impaired The University of Arizona Medical Center’s world-famous transplant services. The hospital’s heart transplant program is on hiatus, as is its lung transplant program. Two other programs recently closed after the doctor who created them—department of surgery head, Rainer Gruessner, MD—was forbidden from setting foot in the hospital where he’d worked for the past six years.

Administrators suspended Gruessner with pay in September and banned him from going to the hospital campus without notifying security. In November he filed a 191-page lawsuit against his employers. UA officials won’t comment on pending litigation. Court documents indicate the suspension was precipitated by an accusation that Gruessner either altered transplant records or directed others to alter them, including removing his name from records of surgeries that may not have gone as planned. Gruessner filed a whistle-blower complaint on January 9, saying administrators retaliated against him for exposing serious problems with transplant record-keeping.

Source: The Arizona Daily Star