Back in 2002, I edited a series of stories at the Orange County Register by the terrific William Heisel and Mayrav Saar called “Doctors without Discipline.” The poster boy of that series was an obstetrician-gynecologist in Anaheim named Andrew Rutland, a popular doctor who had been accused of repeatedly botching deliveries and other procedures. Two newborns had died due to problems in the delivery room. Rutland also faced allegations that he had performed unnecessary hysterectomies.
This was how Heisel and Saar began their April 2002, story:
The pictures show a baby badly injured. An eye swollen shut, an ear bruised and oozing. An infant with a face so disfigured from 37 minutes of stretching and tugging and pulling with forceps that when she lets loose her newborn cry, half her jaw seems to collapse.
Physicians at Placentia Linda Hospital looked at those photos – and at the medical charts and statements from nurses who assisted Dr. Andrew Rutland in the strained delivery – and decided this was not a simple mistake. After 22 meetings, the hospital's peer-review committee voted to ban Rutland from practicing there, stating in hospital records that the rocking motion he used with the forceps "was not within the standard of care." The committee also sent a report to the Medical Board of California.
That was in 1993. Rutland was delivering babies in Anaheim six years later when Kathy Broussard went into labor. Her delivery became complicated, and the doctor used forceps in a similar side- to-side, rocking motion to pull Jillian Teresa Broussard from her mother's womb, according to Medical Board records. This time, the baby died.
Jillian's autopsy report concluded that her spinal cord had been torn.
Rutland continues to deliver babies today.
Nothing had been done about Rutland until the Register began investigating. In 2002, the doctor surrendered his license. There were also allegations that he had lied to patients and had sex with one patient in his office.
Five years later, Rutland got his license back.
And now the kicker: Another patient is dead. Rutland is facing new allegations of negligence in the death of a woman who sought a second-trimester abortion from Rutland.
Citing state records, Register medical reporter Courtney Perkes reports that Rutland gave an anesthetic “without knowledge of the safe dosage range or maximum safe dose.” After the woman died, Rutland failed to report her death to the California Medical Board.
When Rutland surrendered his license before, he admitted only to negligence in the death of baby Jillian Broussard, the little baby whose spinal cord was torn. Little Jillian’s father caught most of the gruesome delivery on his camcorder.
Here is how Heisel and Saar described that delivery:
It took two nurses standing on chairs and pressing their elbows into Broussard's abdomen, her husband holding her by the shoulders and Rutland pulling to finally free Jillian's tiny body from her mother's womb. She emerged pale and limp.
This latest episode involving Rutland raises a whole series of new questions about how the state’s medical board oversees doctors. Perkes of the OC Register reports that the medical board says doctors must prove they have been rehabilitated and are fit to practice before they can get their license back.
"Usually after a license revocation, if they petition successfully and have been reinstated, they are more compliant with the law," a medical board spokeswoman said.
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