Bruce Hudson: Exposing a 'Volume Practice' Doctor

The doctor told 21-year-old Krista Roeper that the rectal bleeding she'd experienced for several weeks was probably caused by a hemorrhoid or a fissure. On 11 visits over the next two years she raised the same problem, but he never conducted a digital rectal exam or a flexible sigmoidoscopy or referred her to a specialist. When she could hardly stand from abdominal pain, the doctor finally did refer her, and she was diagnosed with Stage III colon cancer at 23.

At trial, "the jury was incensed" when the doctor — a sole practitioner who saw 50 to 55 patients a day — admitted he altered Krista's record after learning she had cancer. The panel requested that the doctor not be allowed to practice solo again and that he be required to take a course in medical ethics. But Krista had lost her job and health coverage, and the Roepers, near bankruptcy, settled.

After fighting the disease for another year and a half, she died at home with her husband at her side. "I'm glad the doctor was exposed," said their lawyer, Bruce Hudson of Wilmington, Delaware. "Krista told me, 'I want to make sure he's not allowed to do this to someone else.'