The AdvoKayte Podcast: Holding Healthcare Accountable!

Summary (40m 41s).
Episode 7: Michelle Shughart, the ADA for Dallas County

There was a serial killer loose in Dallas. It took a long time and a lot of people to stop him. Michelle Shughart was one of those very important people. As Assistant District Attorney for Dallas County, Michelle Shughart was the lead prosecutor in the Christopher Duntsch case. Her prosecution of Duntsch put Dr. Death behind bars for the rest of his life. She is currently a felony chief in Dallas County’s crimes against children unit. 

Michelle was the first prosecutor to get a life sentence against a doctor in a criminal malpractice case. She was the first person with authoritative power able to stop Duntsch before he killed or maimed another innocent victim. Where civil authorities would only push the problem of a neurosurgeon with patient outcomes that sometimes included mutilation and death from town to town and hospital to hospital, Michelle managed to put that problem in jail.

The bigger problem, as Kay points out, is that a culture of privileged secrecy and cover-up allowed Christopher Duntsch to become a doctor and a surgeon despite his obvious lack of anatomical knowledge and surgical skill. Lax regulatory systems allowed Duntsch to continue his practices long after producing demonstrably negligent patient outcomes through misdiagnosis and malpractice. That cover-up culture still exists, and the regulatory and reporting systems haven’t tightened. There are almost certainly more monsters hiding in plain sight. 

Michelle walks through what it took for her to put Duntsch away, how his lawyers structured his defense, and her observations of the trial. She talks about dealing with Duntsch directly and how wildly his manner would swing from endearing to threatening and back again. An important warning for some listeners, Michelle graphically describes what Duntsch did to some of his patients and how she presented his actions as evidence in court. 

In his own defense and throughout the entire trial, Duntsch never once took any responsibility for the outcomes of his actions. He blamed his schools, his residency, the hospitals, other practitioners, and both state and federal regulators but at no time did he accept that he himself might be at fault. 

Even with overwhelming evidence against him, it was very difficult to bring Dr. Death to justice. It took a lot of hard work from a lot of people, many of whom are interviewed for this series. The AdvoKAYte Podcast was made to examine the most successful prosecution of a very bad medical practitioner in American history because we know that more Dr. Deaths exist out there.  By working together, lobbying and acting for legislative change, by using the tools currently supplied by the system, and by actually prosecuting malpractice in the name of patient justice, we can help stop bad actors from falling through the cracks before more innocent people are hurt or killed.