Gynecologist Wins Round in Fight to Retain License

Beverly Hills gynecologist Dr. Vicki Georges Hufnagel, an author and anti-hysterectomy activist, has won a round in Los Angeles Superior Court in her three-year-battle to keep her medical license. In a ruling Friday, Judge David Yaffe reversed part of a 1989 decision by the Medical Board of California that would have revoked Hufnagel’s license to practice medicine.

The judge sent the case back to the medical board for further review, stating that the board failed to support its revocation findings in five patient complaints brought against Hufnagel in 1987. Yaffe also cast doubt on findings in a sixth complaint.

But the judge upheld the board’s decision to place Hufnagel on probation for five years, and to impose a number of conditions arising from complaints brought by six other patients.

“I view it as a vindication,” Hufnagel said. “They had my head. It’s like they had me on the guillotine and they took the guillotine away.”

Hufnagel, medical director of the Institute for Reproductive Health, accused the board of trying to revoke her license without evidence and said that Yaffe’s decision revealed that the revocation order was not supported by fact.

However, Deputy State Atty. Gen. Antonio Merino, who represented the board in court, said Yaffe’s decision merely indicated that the board had failed to explain its conclusions adequately. The board must now provide Hufnagel an opportunity for rebuttal in another hearing or drop the revocation segment entirely and impose probation only, Merino said.

Merino said that Yaffe upheld the bulk of the findings in the August, 1989, board decision.

“I don’t see how you can have upheld charges that (you are) grossly negligent and incompetent and feel vindicated,” Merino said.

Both the state and Hufnagel can appeal Yaffe’s decision. Attorneys for both sides said they will study the final ruling before proceeding.

Hufnagel, author of a 1988 book, “No More Hysterectomies,” characterizes herself as a crusader for women’s health and a critic of unnecessary hysterectomies. She advocates a technique called “female reconstructive surgery.”

Because of her activism, she said, the medical establishment has singled her out for legal persecution.

The present case began in 1987 when 13 patients brought complaints against her. Administrative law judge Robert A. Neher determined that Hufnagel performed medical procedures inadequately and repeatedly overcharged for them.

He recommended probation, but the medical board overruled him and recommended revocation of Hufnagel’s license. Hufnagel then filed for review of her case in Superior Court, which delayed revocation, pending the outcome.

During the legal proceedings, Hufnagel has continued to practice medicine and to author and lobby for women’s health care legislation, she said. She is working on a second medical book dealing with her plight, “Behind the Ivory Towers.”