Turner’s Medical Competency Hearing Closes

At the close of an 11-week hearing aimed at revoking the medical license of Anaheim physician Dr. Charles Wesley Turner Jr., Turner’s attorney Wednesday called the charges against his client “a lot of hot air and puffing.”

Attorneys for the Medical Board of California have alleged that Turner is “a menace to the health and safety of the mothers and babies he treats” and that his negligence contributed to the death of at least one baby last year.

In closing arguments, Deputy Atty. Gen. Margaret Lafko told Administrative Law Judge William F. Byrnes that revoking Turner’s license is “the only discipline that will protect the public.”

Outside the courtroom, Turner said he remains “absolutely” confident that he will be cleared.

“God always wins,” he said.

The board wants to revoke Turner’s license based on 12 cases since January, 1987, that the board alleges show that he was “grossly negligent and incompetent” in providing obstetrical care.

One of those cases involved the birth of a baby shortly after midnight New Year’s Day, 1990, when Turner gave a woman in labor at his Covenant Birthing Center a saddle-block anesthetic and used forceps to deliver the first baby of the new year.

He then took the newborn outside, carried the child next door to the Melodyland Christian Center--which was holding a nationally televised religious service--and displayed it to the congregation. The newborn was unharmed.

Judge Byrnes will issue a recommendation to the medical board, which will issue a final decision within 15 days.

Turner’s attorney, Roy O. Moss Jr., has vowed to appeal an unfavorable decision.

In closing remarks, Moss went through the allegations in each of the 12 cases, concluding that they amounted to “mudslinging.”

To suggest that Turner and his nurses did not have their patients’ best interests in mind “is to suggest that these people are subhuman,” Moss said.

In many of the cases, Moss argued, the pregnant women in question were not Turner’s patients but had been seen by Dr. Bruce Wilton for prenatal care. Wilton and Turner had an arrangement in which Turner would perform deliveries on Wilton’s patients because Wilton had lost his hospital privileges.

Moss said the board was “unfairly blaming Dr. Turner” for delivering babies of Wilton’s patients.

In several cases, the first time Turner saw the women was when they went into labor, Moss said.

However, Deputy Atty. Gen. Sherry Ledakis said Turner “tends to blame other people for his problems.”

She said that “a reasonably prudent physician would have consulted with the other doctor” before agreeing to treat his patients.

“Anyone can deliver a baby--even taxi drivers deliver babies,” Ledakis said. “The job of an obstetrician is to anticipate and treat problems.”

Lafko said Turner “thinks he can do things better than anyone else can,” “likes to do things his own way” and “doesn’t care about state medical licensing requirements.”

After March, 1988, when Turner lost his own hospital privileges at Santa Ana Hospital Medical Center and began delivering babies in his office and at the birthing center, “he no longer had to think about peer review,” Lafko said. “There were no peers there.”

Furthermore, Lafko said: “His patients were the poor, . . . the Hispanic community that doesn’t speak English. His patients were not sophisticated and did not know when he made bad judgment calls.”

In addition to the New Year’s Day case, the board alleges that in four cases Turner failed to transfer high-risk babies or their mothers to a hospital from his birthing center.

The board alleges that Turner’s negligence contributed to the death of one of those babies three days after it was born. Turner delivered that baby from a 14-year-old mother by using forceps.

In several other cases, the board alleges that Turner failed to diagnose birth defects, including intrauterine growth retardation.

While Turner was practicing at Santa Ana Hospital Medical Center, he performed high-risk procedures without calling for backup from surgeons, the board alleges.