Since April last year, Dr Thomas Craig Morris has been prevented under emergency powers from performing any surgery outside four low-risk procedures.
He was reported to AHPRA by the management at St Vincent’s Private Hospital in Melbourne after a review by two senior surgeons raised “serious concerns” about his choice of surgery and overall management in the two procedures performed in 2018.
One patient was left with paraplegia.
But in a case before the Supreme Court of Victoria that could test the legal protections offered to mandatory notifiers, Dr Morris is accusing the hospital of defaming him.
He claims its AHPRA notification contained “numerous false statements and errors” and he was denied the opportunity to respond to allegations.
And he says the notification has exposed him to “public disrepute, odium, ridicule and contempt”.
St Vincent’s is defending the action, arguing it is immune from prosecution under provisions in the National Law to protect those making notifications to AHPRA in good faith.
It also says it has a statutory obligation to report “possible risks posed to the public”.
The hospital’s review was conducted by two senior surgeons working outside St Vincent’s.
It claimed Dr Morris undertook spinal fusion surgery on a 70-year-old man with symptoms of spinal degeneration which allegedly displayed “a lack of understanding of the pathology being treated”.
There were concerns Dr Morris also ignored findings of nerve root monitoring.
He had failed to spot malpositioning of the left L4 nerve root, a ‘red flag’ in relation to placement of pedicle screws, it alleged, adding that the screw inserted caused neurological damage which left the patient with “left foot weakness”.
A second patient with a stable, osteoporotic compression fracture of the T5 vertebra was left with permanent paraplegia after Mr Morris operated and placed pedicle screws in the fracture, it was alleged.
The patient was morbidly obese and should have been managed non-operatively, given any surgery in a patient with severe osteoporosis was “doomed to failure”, the review said.
The reviewers also claimed the screws had been placed in the fracture at T5 prior to bone cement, a practice they said they had “never seen or heard of” in 35 years.
This caused the cement to leak into the spinal canal, causing “catastrophic mechanical and thermal irreversible damage to the spinal cord”, the review stated.
But Dr Morris says neither surgeon spoke to him and instead relied on clinical information provided by the hospital that contained “significant factual errors”.
He also said he was never given an opportunity to respond to the findings before they were submitted to the hospital, despite having been reassured by a hospital executive he would have a chance to respond.
As a result, St Vincent’s was aware of the “falsity” of the complaint or was “recklessly indifferent” to the truth, Dr Morris said.
The defamation trial is scheduled to begin in May next year.