Judge Bars Eye Doctor From Practice : Ethics: La Jolla physician is ordered to stop treating patients until a hearing in June to decide if he has performed unnecessary eye surgeries.

A La Jolla eye doctor was temporarily barred from practicing medicine when a judge ruled Friday that he posed a serious risk of injury to the community.

Dr. Jeffrey Rutgard, accused of performing unnecessary eye surgeries on mostly elderly patients, has likened himself to God and described having “a gift from the Lord” that allows him to earn millions of dollars, according to a journal entry he wrote.

Administrative Law Judge M. Gayle Askren on Friday ordered Rutgard to stop treating patients until a three-day hearing beginning June 1, when Askren will decide whether to allow Rutgard to resume his practice or to continue the interim suspension order now in effect.

Within the next two weeks, the state attorney general’s office will file an accusation to revoke Rutgard’s California medical license, which he has held since Dec. 12, 1978, authorities said. Rutgard, who earned $4 million last year, is under federal and state investigation.

Rutgard, 41, has been accused by the attorney general’s office of a laundry list of improprieties, including bilking Medicare of millions of dollars, paying $10,000 in hush money to an employee, operating on patients without their consent or when they didn’t realize they were undergoing surgery, and reusing disposable suture equipment and needles during operations.

But Rutgard’s two attorneys, Cheryl S. Ruffier and Rene A. Sotorrio, maintained Friday that their client will be exonerated and that the judge’s actions only deprive the poor and the elderly of a caring doctor who tended them when few others would.

“These allegations will be proven to be misleading and, in many cases, false,” said Sotorrio, a Miami lawyer who flew here to assist with the case.

In the courtroom, as well as outside, Sotorrio and Ruffier maintained that Rutgard had operated on 9,000 patients since 1978 without any patients dying or lodging complaints.

In fact, they said, they had several hundred letters from patients praising Rutgard. The case against Rutgard arose because of a “few dissatisfied patients, inevitable in any doctor’s practice,” disgruntled former employees and competing eye doctors, Sotorrio said.

“Dr. Rutgard does not pretend that he is perfect. He does not say he is infallible,” Sotorrio said. “He tells his patients the truth, he does not mislead them, and (he) serves them.”

But, during an administrative hearing Friday morning, Judge Askren read aloud a 66-year-old patient’s account of undergoing cataract surgery and then unknowingly being scheduled for eyelid surgery. At the conclusion of this account, Askren announced that the attorney general’s office had met its obligations in showing that Rutgard posed a threat to the community.

When Ruffier asked whether the judge would allow Rutgard to continue his practice but stop conducting surgeries, Askren curtly responded: “No.”

Rutgard, who owns about $6 million in La Jolla and San Diego properties, did not attend the hearing. He was unavailable to comment.

In a recent color brochure, he wrote to his patients: “As most of you know, ‘I love my patients and feel you are all a part of my family. You are special to me.’ ”

A grim picture, however, emerges from former patients and the 400 pages detailing patients’ and employees’ accounts of Rutgard’s lucrative practice in records filed Thursday with the Office of Administrative Law, which governs medical licenses.

The state claims Rutgard dispatched unlicensed employees to nursing homes and senior centers to conduct free eye tests. And inevitably, according to court records, the employees would tell the would-be patients that they had cataracts and should see Rutgard. He sent out Christmas cards promising free eye examinations and offered free transportation to his offices, one in La Jolla and the other in Hillcrest.

By all accounts, his waiting rooms were filled with predominantly elderly patients, who were readily wooed by his charms and attention, according to court records. At his Hillcrest office, Rutgard purportedly examined 180 patients a day.

“That is an astounding number, 180 a day,” said Janie Cordray, spokeswoman for the Medical Board of California.

And, within the offices, according to court records, many common medical practices were simply disregarded. Rutgard operated on patients who didn’t realize they were undergoing surgery and on patients whose hands had been guided to sign their names, according to records.

“This is not a case just about unnecessary cataract surgery. This is a practice built on deception,” Sandy Feldman, a supervising deputy attorney general, said during court proceedings Friday. Rutgard “lies to everybody he wants to if it’s going to make money for him. . . . Money is his god.”