O.C. Doctor Listed as Suicide Was Target of Fraud Probe

A dermatologist who was struck and killed after walking into freeway traffic last week had been under investigation by the state medical board for allegedly faking diagnoses of skin cancer in patients to collect higher fees, officials said.

Dr. Orville Stone, 61, former head of the dermatology department at UCI Medical Center, was accused by five former employees of his private practice in Huntington Beach of using cancerous patients’ skin tissue to fake diagnoses in hundreds of healthy patients, said Steve Rhoten, an investigator with the Medical Board of California.

Those employees named 13 non-cancerous patients Stone allegedly treated for cancer and accused him of deliberately doing the same to many more, Rhoten said.

On Friday, the day after the board served a search warrant at his Main Street practice, Dermatology Medical Group, Stone walked in front of traffic on Interstate 10 near Indio, the California Highway Patrol said.

“He basically parked his car, walked down to the embankment and walked in front of the path of a truck and was struck by four other cars,” Officer David Peterson said Wednesday. The CHP listed the death as a suicide.

But Stone’s attorney, Gary B. Ross, on Wednesday said Stone’s death was accidental, and he denied the board’s allegations. The doctor “may have stumbled” onto the road, Ross said. Or he may have been “disoriented” because he was upset, had not slept Thursday night and had forgotten to take his hypertension medication that day, the attorney said.

Stone’s family has hired an investigator to look into the board’s allegations to “clear his name,” Ross said.

Stone was a respected dermatologist who has treated thousands of patients during his more than 25 years in practice, Ross said. The attorney claimed “disgruntled” employees concocted “unsubstantiated accusations” against Stone because they were fired for poor job performance.

However, Rhoten said the employees who filed the claim with his office a month ago “were credible and not vindictive at all.” The accusation was even more plausible because one of the employees did not know the other four, he said.

Current employees, in interviews with state investigators last week, substantiated the board’s suspicion, Rhoten said.

Now, he said, the investigation probably will end once it is determined that no one else was involved.

According to the search warrant affidavit filed in Orange County Municipal Court, the former employees accused Stone of hoarding cancerous moles or skin tissue he removed from at least three patients. He then would take healthy tissue from patients, diagnose them as having cancer, and switch the tissues, sending the diseased tissue to a laboratory for analysis.

Rhoten said Stone normally charged about $50 to remove non-cancerous skin tissue and about $150 to remove the cancerous one. Neither procedure is dangerous, nor do the methods differ, he said. “One just costs more than the other.”

On Wednesday, as word of Stone’s death and the allegations reached his peers, many said they were shocked.

“I have the greatest respect for him as a physician, a teacher and a researcher,” said Dr. Ronald Barr, professor of dermatology and pathology at UCI Medical Center where Stone headed the dermatology department in the mid 1970s. “I’ve never known him to do anything that would be unprofessional.”

Added Dr. Lawrence Sherwin, a Santa Ana dermatologist who also was under the tutelage of Stone at UCI. “The fact that he’s investigated doesn’t mean that he has done anything wrong. Orville was a very nice man, a friendly and good teacher. If he did those things, I’ll be very surprised.”