DOCUMENT: Crime

Surgeon Leaves O.R. To Cash A Check

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Surgeon Leaves O.R. To Cash A Check

Massachusetts officials yesterday (8/7) yanked the medical license of a doctor who abandoned a patient on the operating table last month so that he could "stepout" and cash a check at a nearby Cambridge bank. Declaring that Dr. David Arndt's July 10 action posed "an immediate threat to the public health, safety and welfare," the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine suspended Arndt's license pending an appeal by the orthopedic surgeon. The state's case against Arndt, a 41-year-old Harvard Medical School graduate, is laid out in the below affidavit of Brendan Finnegan, a medical board investigator. Arndt, who apparently feared that the bank would close before he did, was gone for about 30 minutes before returning to the O.R., where his anesthetized patient--in for spinal surgery--was lying prone with an open incision on his back. (8 pages)

This could be America's worst mom.