Racked by convulsions, she crashed from the exam table to the floor. She would stay there nearly an hour while Gosnell and his staff refused to call 911 or allow her companion to leave the locked clinic for help, according to a lawsuit her lawyer filed.
Barger, 34, a recovering drug addict, had warned Gosnell that she was on methadone when she went to his West Philadelphia clinic April 2, 2005, her filing said. She knew the drug could interact dangerously with certain sedatives. What she could not have known was that Gosnell had a long history of injuring his patients and had let his malpractice insurance lapse nearly a year earlier in violation of state law.
Lawyers at Pennsylvania's Department of State, charged with weeding out bad doctors, were told about the lapse and Barger's lawsuit - along with many others - but took no action. Barger's lawyer said he suspected that Gosnell had paid his client privately to walk away.
Barger's case provides a window into the state's system to discipline doctors, one that relies heavily on physician self-reporting and state investigators whose effectiveness has been questioned. It's a system that patient-safety advocates and a leading ethicist say is broken. Philly.com
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