TSAI Talk – Kay Van Wey

Kay Van Wey TSAI Talk 

January 22, 2025

Thank you all for having me. As I was standing here looking around the room, I couldn’t help but notice we’re surrounded by a bunch of old lawyers. And I’m not just talking about myself. Although, I do include myself in that category.

I want to start off by telling you a story.

Once upon a time, there was this doctor who specialized in spine surgeries—specifically, a 360° fusion. This was a 13-hour operation. It began with the patient prone. They’d open up the back, operate on the spine, flip the patient over, and operate from the front. One of the highest-paying procedures in all of surgery. A surgeon who could perform it day in and day out was a financial godsend for a struggling hospital.

Somewhere along the way, this physician began behaving strangely. Post-surgical outcomes started deteriorating. But the hospital didn’t want to lose their golden goose. Still, they asked him to submit to random drug tests. The tests—unsupervised—came back clean. Yet the carnage continued.

Eventually, the hospital asked him to come in for a hair test. He agreed. He showed up the next morning with no hair anywhere on his body—every last strand shaved or bleached. The joke became: the only way to keep Dr. So-and-So out of the OR was to throw a white line in front of him. He was, as it turned out, a horrific cocaine addict.

Now—who do you think I’m talking about?

No, not Duntsch. This was a decade before Dr. Christopher Duntsch.

That earlier case got picked up by 20/20. The Duntsch case? It became a global true-crime sensation. Billions of downloads. But nothing about the system has changed. That same system created both monsters.

I don’t tell this story to scare people away from doctors. We all need them. We all love someone who sees one. But I do tell it to illustrate how a broken system continues to enable harm.

There’s practicing law, and then there’s finding your “why.” I’m 66. People always ask why I don’t retire. Go get an RV. See the national parks. But I have a purpose. That’s what sustains me. And I hope all of you find that for yourselves. Your “why” can’t be money or a Range Rover. That won’t get you through the hard days.

Let’s talk about Christopher Duntsch.

He was brilliant. And a lifelong recreational drug user. During his residency at a children’s hospital in Memphis, a nurse reported that he’d party all night, then throw on his white coat and go treat children. When asked to take a drug test, he claimed he had to check on an ICU patient first—then disappeared for three days. That was considered a refusal. He was sent to rehab.

That didn’t stop him. He finished his residency anyway. Got glowing letters of recommendation. Why? He had invented a stem cell technology. And the head of his residency program—also a neurosurgeon—was on the board of the company that bought it. Billions were at stake.

He completed residency without doing the number of surgeries required for competence. He didn’t get the repetitions. He didn’t get the supervision. But he got his license—and he got hired at Baylor Plano.

There, he operated on 20 patients. 16 were injured. One was a lifelong friend—possibly his drug dealer—who woke up a quadriplegic. That friend confessed Duntsch had been up all night doing cocaine before surgery.

Instead of suspending him, Baylor let him resign in “good standing” and even gave him a recommendation. He moved on to Dallas Medical Center, a financially strapped hospital. He performed three surgeries there. All three patients were harmed.

One patient, Loela Brown, had her vertebral artery nicked and died in ICU. While she was dying, Duntsch demanded an OR to perform brain surgery—at a hospital not equipped for it, where he wasn’t credentialed, and which didn’t even have the tools. His next patient, Mary Efurd, was my client. He operated entirely outside the spinal column, placing hardware in the muscles.

Another surgeon, brought in later, opened her up and said it looked like a bomb had gone off. He suspected Duntsch wasn’t a surgeon at all—maybe even an imposter. When he called the director of Duntsch’s residency program, the man praised him as a “great surgeon.” Why? Because he had a financial interest in protecting Duntsch’s reputation.

Eventually, we got the truth. Duntsch continued to harm patients at other facilities. I called one administrator and said, “You’ve got a mass murderer on staff.” I was transferred to their collections lawyer. Their priority was unpaid bills—not patient safety.

I’ve been threatened. I’ve had to look over my shoulder. Duntsch once emailed me offering to be my expert witness in the lawsuits against him—because he believed we could make money together.

One expert we hired called one of the surgeries “a clean kill.” That’s how bad it was. And yet the system—hospitals, residency programs, licensing boards—protected him. Credentialing data is secret. Hospitals don’t report problems to the national databank because they don’t want liability. Since its inception, more than half of U.S. hospitals have never reported a single doctor.

There is no balance of power. Patients can’t sue hospitals for failing to act. Everything’s privileged. Damages are capped. But a surgeon can sue for lost income and win tens of millions.

What sustained me—and still does—is the “No More Doctor Deaths” group. We meet monthly. We’ll go to our graves trying to fix this. Why?

Because I’m a patient. And everyone I love is a patient.

So are you.