Complaint Review: Mayo Clinic Board of Trustees

Mayo Board of Trusteest is allowing surgeries without consent, without indication.  Patients come to Mayo Clinic for consultations, and the patients – especially the MD ones – read the Mayo Clinic Proceedings and expect care of that caliber – not a free-for-all to get cases for the Chief of Surgery flying in for the week and then flying out again (Dr. Michael Sarr on the weekly Rochester air shuttle). 

Dr. ‘Warner’ Andrew Oldenburg (Vascular Surgery Jacksonville Mayo Clinic), and others, go along with this charade of the Chiefs, and no Department Chair – or Mayo appointment - is worth this kind of patient care.  Better is expected of him and others at Mayo.  The Chiefs might lose it, but the whole Staff of surgical attendings shouldn't.   

Surgeons at Mayo should get the Department Chair by standing up for good patient care and what’s in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings – not for a farce of ‘normal’ nerves on the Pathology slab at Mayo Clinic for the money of it all.  The abdominal neurectomy procedure mess.   

Dr. Sarr collected for these neurectomy cases, but the Mayo Clinic couldn’t – and he should not have either – no insurance should be paying for this procedure outdated by Carnett in 1926 - time that the Mayo surgeons caught up on the literature.  Today you just read the article on the web at: http://xnet.kp.org/permanentejournal/sum02/acnes.pdf.  But the Medical Students at Mayo are too buy texting and taking 'selfies.' 

 These neurectomy cases should have been ‘undone’ immediately as the patients requested, but haven’t been – the layers of fascia repaired.  If Mayo Clinic can’t do layered fascia repairs, they should get out of the Surgery business – every surgery has a fascia involved. 

Mayo Clinic Board of Trustees needs to arrange for all patient ‘repairs’ from this farce of a surgery – a surgery rarely indicated, and only after trials of different medical therapies over months to years.  Some cases, the insurances might cover the surgical repair (although not after Obamacare gets up to full speed).  But the Mayo Clinic won’t find out until they see all of Dr. Sarr’s neurectomies in follow-up, see the bad results of common mass closure, and decide whether this should continue – it should be a no-brainer.  Dr. Sarr never does a follow-up, he’s on the last flight out for the weekend – there’s a T-shirt about that.

The Mayo Clinic needs to evaluate this situation, and refuses to do so - maybe the procedures are paying for the Board of Trustees food sideboards.  Maybe the abdominal neurectomy procedure should be done on some of the surgical staff – that would stop the procedure in 5 minutes, or do it on a Member of the Board of Trustees.  It’s painful, and not pain relief.

Unnecessary abdominal wall neurectomies should not make a surgical quota procedure number, this is a dangerous surgery with the potential for complications, deformity, chronic pain – and no benefit.  It’s not the treatment for abdominal wall nerve inflammations, and should never even be allowed on the surgical scheduled at Mayo – it’s a rare procedure after workup and anesthesia nerve block(s), not a ‘staple’ for residents to cut their first incision on. 

If the Mayo resident wants a case, they should be in the examining room doing the Carnett’s test, not expecting Dr. Sarr to get them a case with patient threats.  Dr. Sarr takes patients alone in rooms and tells them to ‘pick a resident,’ and the patient doesn’t know or see a resident – which is duress and bullying.  The residents should have stopped this nonsense, the medical students even, but first the Anesthesia & Nursing Staff – and no one did.  Dr. Sarr should not be getting a surgery for any resident, the Mayo resident should be getting his/her own surgeries.  And certainly no professional patient is a resident case – that’s just butchery, and asking for trouble in future recommendations for the resident.  The MD patient will be mad, and no matter if the result is ok, he/she will say that the resident over-stepped.        

Then the patients asking that these surgeries be undone are either (1) never seen/scheduled again at Mayo Clinic, (2) have their e-mail addresses cancelled from the Mayo system, (3) have to complain to the Medical Board of MN losing their medical confidentiality, or (4) are sued for defamation by Dr. Sarr who didn’t read the Mayo Proceedings case study on abdominal wall pain and ACNES diagnosis (about the Carnett’s test).  It’s not ‘defamation’ if the patient never consented to the surgery, and said ‘No’ to any muscle or nerve dissection/removal – and the professional patients said that specifically.  None of that should be necessary at Mayo Clinic – it’s Mayo Clinic not a Community Hospital. 

About Honorary MD degrees and the wrong influencing/buyout of Board of Trustees Members: Norman Cousins spoke at a Case Western Reserve Medical School graduation years ago (1980), and did not require payment with a Honorary Medical Degree – and he was a political journalist, author and professor.  Good commencement speeches don’t require Honorary Degrees; they require honesty, integrity, and frankness.   

As one Dean at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine used to put it, ‘tell me why you need the degree, and I’ll help you get it’ – that PhD didn’t get an Honorary MD degree either – he didn’t ‘need’ it to be a better Dean of Students (Ken Scott).  Tom Brokaw doesn’t need the payoff of a MD degree to speak at a Medical School Commencement - that trivializes the MD to a journalistic award, or a goffer ‘fixer’ reward.  Tom Brokaw needs medical ethics training, as does Dr. Noseworthy.

Finally, the whole problem is photobombed by a picture of a Jill Beed on Facebook; why the Mayo Legal Department allows this kind of ‘care’ – no one thinks about medical care in a serious way at Mayo Clinic – from the Board of Trustees to the graduating medical students.