Neurosurgeon wins concurrency case against Syracuse hospital

by: Laura Evans, CPC May 30, 2017

A neurosurgeon who claims he was pressured to resign from a Syracuse, N.Y., hospital after raising concerns about double-booking operating rooms there has been awarded more than $88,200 in lost wages by a New York Supreme Court Justice, according to a report in Outpatient Surgery Magazine.

James Holsapple, MD had questioned the policy at Upstate University Hospital to allow a new spine specialist to perform concurrent cases in adjacent ORs. That practice has come under scrutiny recently after some patients ended up paralyzed or with other complications. Often patients are not informed in advance that the surgeon will be performing their surgery at the same time as he or she is doing another case down the hall.

Holsapple first objected to the practice of performing concurrent surgeries in 2007. The hospital responded by cutting his salary by $82,000 a year and removing him from positions at the facility such as the position of residence coordinator. The neurosurgeon departed from Upstate in 2009 and filed his lawsuit against the hospital two years later. In it, Holsapple alleged that the hospital retaliated against him and pressured him to resign for criticizing the concurrency policy. He is now chief of neurosurgery at Boston Medical Center.

New York Supreme Court Justice James P. Murphy agreed with Holsapple and awarded him $88,275 in lost wages. The hospital said it is considering an appeal.

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