Complaint Review: Governor John Kasich - Columbus Ohio

Governor Kasich is currently the only Governor still allowing State Medical Board Members to author 'confidential' complaints against MD classmates or competitors, in care disagreements where the Board Member's 'care' is in question, to cover the liability of the Board Member, their affiliated hospital, and 'friends' until the statute of limitations expires - or forever.



Certain physicians in Ohio, directly because of the 'confidential' complaint system, can threaten to get a colleague physician's medical license suspended literally forever - because you won't be able to get the complaint to say what is really going on, and you won't be able to sign to end things for a 'confidential' complaint case.  As a physician in Ohio, once in the Medical Board system, the case never ends because you can't defend yourself against a continually changing 'confidential' file - and the Board won't admit that the case was false - even after $500,000 and almost two decades of trying.  The Medical Board in one case has gotten five 'goes' and wants a sixth 'go.'  This is just a tragedy for the taxpayers, that physician & her family, and Ohio.  



The 'confidential' physician complaints in Ohio are admittedly constantly changed to 'fine tune' or morph the complaint from the original one - so that there is double, triple and as many times retrial/roundabout of the situation as the Board needs to win.  And if there is no real case, the Board can never admit this under the present rules - which are the worst procedural rules in the country - including Alaska & Hawaii - in Ohio we don't have bad physicians practicing medicine by accident. 



Former Representative Trakas, now in charge of the Cosmetology Board, admitted in 2000 that the State Medical Board continually changed the 'confidential' physician complaints for their own liability purposes - and he refused to help co-author a measure to stop this - so he's now rewarded with the Board of Cosmetology position - and he knows nothing about Cosmetology but he will cover up the messes.  



As State Representative, Jim Trakas got rid of the woman staff person in his office who tried to help falsely accused physician constituents get their files - so cosmetologists are in a bad way with Governor Kasich's choice. 



These 'confidential' physician complaints in Ohio are admittedly continually changed and morphed to find a case, as in most instances the Board does not have a case when it initially suspends a medical license in Ohio.  That is not what was going on in the 1980s, when the Medical Board had to have a case or multiple patient complaints first.  Things changed in the 1990s - to where the State Medical Board of Ohio could take a medical license for provisional even when 'provisional' was a pile of hearsay (no rules of evidence), blatant lies, sexual innuendo, and fabrication. 



Currently, The State Medical Board does not abide by Ohio law in taking medical licenses, it makes the case conform to some excuse of a 'provisional' case.    



Mr. Whitehouse - the current Executive Director - freely admits to lawyers that these cases are about the statute of limitations - the Board's, the Member's and the physicians that signed the false complaint - but he doesn't have to produce the complaint under the 'confidential' law - although the Board breaks this law daily for their 'friends' to get their complaints so that their 'friends' can fight their cases at the Medical Board successfully.  If you know what the accusation is, you can clear your name, but not if the accusation is that you exist. 



It's not uncommon right now, to have a Medical Board case where one physician has their 'complaint' and the other does not - on opposite sides of the care dispute - and the only physician that can get out of the case is the one who can directly attack the issues and prove innocence because the complaint is not constantly changing for 20 years. 



The Medical Board provides this service to their 'friends' for contracts, hospital appointments, Board appointments (Anita Steinbergh DO is on a lot of DO Boards, writing DO tests, and she can't talk a straight sentence about anything medical).  The payoffs are hard to prove and in fluid currency - the rewards that all physicians are looking for but don't have to put on a W-2 = appointments, contracts. 



You can't fight an accusation at the State Medical Board of Ohio if you don't know what the accusation is, and the Medical Board then goes on a 'fishing-expedition' of the accused physician's whole live for years - discussing the physician's dating life for hours in testimony and public records.  One case is still going on after almost 2 decades because the Medical Board has yet to find a case for Carla O'Day MD - and Governor Kasich & his office are sitting on the mess.  If you call - his staff hangs up - and Brad Reynolds is never there. 



Currently one 'friend' of Dr. O'Day's - on the Medical Board from 1990 to 1993 - still threatens that he can get a colleague's license taken so that they never practice medicine again - if they don't go along with his wishes for referrals, that you do things for him professional & personal, and that you recommend his care.  And he's completely on point - he can get any physician's license taken in Ohio to this day.  Cleveland Clinic still keeps him on staff at Hillcrest Hospital even though he's a disaster many days as to his results, unusual complications, and his refusing to refer or consult when he gets in trouble. 



But who are his contacts on the current Medical Board who will do anything for him: Dr. Steinbergh and Dr. Talmadge are two of them.  Both were appointed with the rainmaker support of Dr. Fred Suppes - Dr. Nice's neighbor, personal friend, drinking buddy, and colleague in getting things from 'Catholic girls who are easy.'       



With 'confidential' physician complaints, the conflicts-of-interest of the signer/complainer physicians are never brought up.  You can have pages of conflicts-of-interest, and still sign a 'confidential' complaint against a physician colleague.  There are no rules of evidence or due process at The State Medical Board of Ohio. 



Attempts to educate Brad Reynolds about what is going on have not been successful, and neither Brad Reynolds, nor Governor Kasich, seem to be aware that the State of Texas finally stopped this practice after the Medical Board President was having her husband file 'confidential' physician complaints against her competitors to take their licenses for disagreeing and competing with her. 



The woman President of the State Medical Board, little different from Dr. Carla O'Day and others in Ohio, was having her husband author complaints to 'take out' her competitors - with no one knowing who complained, and that he had a conflict-of-interest as the husband of the Medical Board President.  Does anyone get that this is not right? 



Apparently not in Ohio.  And the Medical Board Members being perpetually reappointed plays into this fraud in Ohio - the Health Committee in the Ohio Senate couldn't get Governor Taft to nominate another name other than Lance Talmadge MD the last time he was up for re-appointment.



Ohio is currently the only State where Medical Board Members can complain and destroy the lives of competitors without anyone knowing what the case is about, ie no patient complaints involved.  The Ohio State Medical Board is still doing this; in 1990-3 Carla O'Day MD went after competitors & MD classmates who disagreed with her or got bad care in the Hillcrest ER she was co-directing.



The cases have been complained about for 20 years now, but nothing has been done to reinstate the physician licenses.  Carla O'Day MD had two marriages, 5 children, was running a Divorce Support Group for herself & Mrs. Celeste, attempting to run Hillcrest Emergency Room, and on the State Medical Board even though she never finished any formal residency training program - she knew the Celestes and 'pillow talk' did the rest - it was not her credentials. 



Carla O'Day MD not only authored the complaints, set up the pre-fixed evaluations (experts for the State Medical Board of Ohio have to promise the result that the Board wants), and ran the investigations on competitor MDs despite challenges by the lawyers for the MDs.  To this day those cases have not been opened for review - although they almost were in 1998 - but the State of Texas finally had to do that.  Governor Kasich is just into more fraud than another other Governor regarding the State Medical Board of Ohio, and he seems to like sitting in the pile of s---; no other Governor would let this go on.



No one denies that Carla O'Day MD got paid in the one physician case for getting Hillcrest Hospital out of any liability for the botched care of a woman MDs fractures.  The ER visit had the woman MD placed in a conference room, her fracture casted without adequate padding, and no x-ray was taken because everyone was distracted watching the attending eat pizza. 



The fracture required both reduction, and an x-ray, casting with the correct padding, and an x-ray post-casting - but there were no rules of care or checklists as Carla O'Day MD ran the ER.  So she was negligent, in a supervisory way, and had the woman MD's license taken for 'making too much of admittedly bad care,' ie boys being boys care. 



The State Medical Board of Ohio covers up daily that the boys are being boys in Ohio.  But the payoff was that Carla O'Day MD, despite rather a poor performance as co-director, became the official ER Director and got the contract for ER services for her group - something that she would never have gotten without the support of the orthopedic who couldn't cast a fracture correctly, but could eat pizza.  There were other false cases that Dr. O'Day ran and profited from, as she doesn't do anything except for the money - since Medical School.  



Governor Kasich needs to do something about the misuse of 'confidential' complaints at the State Medical Board of Ohio, and look into the rewards that physicians get for serving on the State Medical Board - job kudos, hospital appointments, contracts, and Testing Board positions that suddenly are available to them for no merit.