Three Houston medical institutions have agreed to pay $15 million to settle federal allegations that they looked the other way for years as three surgeons double-booked themselves for complex heart procedures, dipping in and out of concurrent operations and leaving unqualified residents in charge of dangerous procedures. Three doctors — Joseph Coselli, 71, Joseph Lamelas, 63 and David Ott, 77 — routinely “engaged in a regular practice of running two operating rooms at once and delegating key aspects of extremely complicated and risky heart surgeries to unqualified medical residents,” the U.S.
Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas said in a statement announcing the settlement. A 2019 whistleblower complaint sparked the investigation into practices at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center, Baylor College of Medicine, and the Surgical Associates of Texas.
The practice not only violated Medicare regulations but also jeopardized patient safety during “some of the most complicated operations performed at any hospital,” federal officials said. “Patients entrusted these surgeons with their lives — submitting to operations where one missed cut is the difference between life and death,” U.S.
Attorney Alamdar Hamdani said in the statement. “Allegedly, the patients were unaware their doctor was leaving for another operating room.” Ott outright denied the allegations.
“We have proven, using hospital records and operating room timelines, that I was in .
