Doctor was performing major surgery in his home

[Liberal_in_LA]

:wtf: I knew dentistry was being practiced in these home clinics (for immigrant community). Didn't know you could get major surgery done as well.

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Osvaldo Hernandez stepped into what looked like a humble, stucco-slathered home in Inglewood.

He walked into a former bedroom and sat on the edge of a sectional table. Sheets covered the windows. Boxes and cabinets of medical supplies were arrayed along the walls.

Hernandez undressed. He stretched out on the table and was hooked up to a monitor. The doctor inserted an IV line into a vein in the crook of his left elbow and began giving him Lidocaine, a powerful local anesthetic.

More than six hours later, the 30-year-old dishwasher, an illegal immigrant who arrived with a pain in his belly and about $3,000 in his wallet, was carried out to a coroner's van.

Last month, nearly two years after Hernandez's death in 2008, Los Angeles prosecutors filed involuntary manslaughter charges against Dr. Roberto Bonilla, 61, the surgeon Hernandez had sought out for gallbladder surgery.

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Soft-spoken and thin, with a gray mane of hair, Bonilla defends his unorthodox medical practice as necessary to provide care to patients who could not otherwise afford it.


Health officials agree that the case illustrates the lengths to which the poor and uninsured will sometimes go to save money on medical care. Moreover, Hernandez's case appears to underscore a loophole in state laws regulating where major surgeries can be performed.


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Bonilla had three medical assistants with him but no anesthesiologist or nurse anesthetist. The clinic is just around the corner from Centinela Hospital Medical Center, and while Bonilla tried to revive the patient for three hours, he never called 911. But he did call a funeral home to pick up the body.

The manslaughter charges are based on "the totality of things. This was not an appropriate setting for major surgery," said John Lonergan, the prosecutor on the case from the L.A. County district attorney's office. "When the patient went into cardiac arrest, he should have immediately gotten a higher level of care. A hospital was just a short distance away."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0425-home-surgery-20100425,0,5855651.story

[Liberal Veteran]

1. The guy should have gone to one of those fancy chicken accepting surgery clinics.

[Ikonoklast]

2. The old-fashioned do-it-yourself-at-home surgeon I use

takes KFC in payment, no live chickens allowed.


Extra Crispy only, however.

[Liberal Veteran]

3. Do they throw in a private room if you offer them a Double Down?

I mean, it has bacon and all that!