Illinois regulators suspend license of ex-VA surgeon

MARION, Ill. -- Illinois medical regulators Wednesday indefinitely suspended the license of a surgeon under scrutiny in a string of deaths at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Southern Illinois.

Dr. Jose Veizaga-Mendez, 69, agreed to the suspension as part of a deal reached with the state late last month, resolving an investigation Illinois regulators launched over circumstances that led him to surrender his Massachusetts license last year.

The Illinois Medical Disciplinary Board approved the agreement Wednesday and the head of the state's Division of Professional Regulation immediately signed the order.

The board's action was unrelated to any conduct by Veizaga-Mendez at the Marion, Ill., VA hospital, from which he resigned Aug. 13, three days after a Kentucky man apparently bled to death after undergoing gallstone-removal surgery Veizaga-Mendez performed.

After Veizaga-Mendez's departure, the VA hospital suspended surgeries while investigating the deaths of nine veterans -- all in some way linked to Veizaga-Mendez, Sen. Dick Durbin has said -- within in a six-month period ending in March, during which the hospital would have expected only two deaths.

Durbin and Sen. Barack Obama, both Illinois Democrats, had clamored for the state to take swift against Veizaga-Mendez, saying the state should not wait until a December disciplinary hearing. In a letter Tuesday to Illinois' top medical regulator, the lawmakers suggested any state inaction could endanger patients.

The disciplinary board handled the matter as quickly as it could, and Wednesday's meeting was the first since the consent order was signed, said Susan Hofer, an Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation spokeswoman. An attorney for the department signed the agreement Sept. 24, six days before Veizaga-Mendez did.

Veizaga-Mendez, who did not attend Wednesday's hearing, has no listed telephone number in Illinois and Massachusetts and has been unreachable for comment.

On Aug. 1, less than two weeks before he resigned from the Marion VA, Veizaga-Mendez applied for a license from the North Dakota State Board of Medical Examiners. The board has taken no action because the Bolivian-trained doctor's application was incomplete, said Duane Houdek, the board's executive secretary said.

Durbin said he has been putting the word out about Veizaga-Mendez, urging North Dakota's two U.S. senators to contact the North Dakota licensure authority about the doctor's application.

"I believe he should be subjected to a thorough investigation in any state where he applies for a license," Durbin said.

Messages left by The Associated Press Wednesday with A. Jay Goldstein, a Chicago attorney for Veizaga-Mendez in the Illinois licensing matter, were not immediately returned.

Durbin said he didn't directly ask that Veizaga-Mendez's license be suspended, but the disciplinary board "made the right decision."

Last year, Veizaga-Mendez surrendered his license in Massachusetts. Even before he was hired at the Marion VA, the doctor had made payouts in two malpractice suits in Massachusetts and was under investigation there on suspicion of botching seven cases, two of which ended in deaths.

"Based on the claims against this doctor, the malpractice claims, and disciplinary action taken against him in Massachusetts and the investigation under way in Illinois, his right to practice medicine should be suspended," Durbin told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Hofer said an indefinite suspension "has exactly the same result as a revocation," meaning Veizaga-Mendez could not seek to have his Illinois license restored unless Massachusetts first allows him to practice again there.

Durbin said Veizaga-Mendez's license deserved a fair hearing in Illinois, "but I was concerned that while an investigation was under way some other terrible things might happen."

Durbin and Obama have pressed for answers about Veizaga-Mendez's background and how he came to be hired by the Marion VA.