Rx for Redemption

Dr. Stephen Levine was once a neurosurgeon, with staff privileges at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and an office in Beverly Hills.

Now he works out of his car, his practice consisting almost entirely of house calls on nursing home patients and shut-ins in the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys.

It’s a far cry from his former, high-income practice, but Levine, 54, is content to still be in medicine at all, seeking redemption through his profession.

Exactly 11 years ago, Levine was in jail on a conviction of involuntary manslaughter, pleaded down from an original charge of murder.

His wife, Myrna, had died in their Tarzana home of an overdose of Demerol, a powerful painkiller to which she was addicted. An investigation showed that Levine had written more than 200 prescriptions--many of which were made out to a fictitious person--to provide her with the drug.

In the years after the widely publicized court proceedings--during which the judge who sentenced Levine described him as “a tragic figure”--and his six months in jail, the doctor has worked quietly to rebuild his professional life. Last year he began a new venture based on an old idea--house calls.

He never remarried and is raising his daughters as a single parent. And he never considered leaving medicine, despite constant reminders of his past.

“It’s always there,” Levine said just before a house call this week. “Every time you apply to a hospital, change an address, re-register for something.”

But it is his profession that has sustained him.

“If anything, medicine was the pathway for redemption and resurrection, even though I don’t feel very high off the ground in terms of resurrection,” said the soft-spoken doctor. “It’s a strong discipline, and it is a refuge.

“It’s a path of healing.”

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The murder charge was brought in September 1985 after several months of investigation. There was evidence at the time that Levine, in addition to writing the prescriptions, had tried to cover up the true cause of death.

Even so, the prosecutor agreed to allow Levine to plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter.

“It was tragic. He was a victim of his marriage,” said the prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Dawson, in a recent interview.

Levine gave his addicted wife the drugs, Dawson continued, “because he loved the woman. He didn’t want to see her in pain, and he couldn’t get her off it.”

The doctor’s sentence was served under a program that allowed him out of jail to work during the day. After his release, the Medical Board of California suspended his license for six months, but according to board officials, no actions have been taken against him since then and his license is now fully valid.

Levine said that even with his legal troubles behind him, he didn’t want to return to his former practice. He checked into the possibility of neurosurgery positions in different cities, but only halfheartedly. “I don’t think I was ready for it,” he said.

In 1989, he began a general practice in the Riverside County city of Beaumont and then in 1995 moved his family to a town of about 4,000 in Illinois where he co-headed a rural clinic. But it wasn’t to his liking.

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He moved back to the San Fernando Valley in 1996, settling in North Hollywood, but not to return to neurosurgery. “I missed the surgical aspects of it, but I had been away from it for too long,” he said. “I would have had to go through retraining.”

He spread the word to other doctors that he was willing to make house calls and began serving nursing and convalescent homes from his car.

“It seemed like it would be an expanding market,” he said. “It seemed like the time to bring it back.”

Most physicians stopped doing house calls--a regular feature of a medical practice as recently as the 1950s--on a regular basis for two reasons, he said. First, because of technology’s increasing role, doctors wanted to see patients in places where equipment was available.

“But with telemedicine, we will be able to do many of those tests right in the home, and even bring in a consultant by video,” Levine said.

The second reason was economic. Although Medicare and other agencies pay for house calls to shut-ins, the fee is only slightly more than for an office visit. And obviously, because of the travel time involved, a doctor going to homes can’t see as many patients in a day.

Levine and a marketer with whom he is working have been unable to interest any other physicians in joining their venture full time. The handful of home-bound patients Levine currently sees are referrals from other doctors.

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Still, he is determined to show it can be done.

“I keep everything here,” he said recently, opening the trunk of his car on an Arcadia street where he was about to make a house call. Inside were a portable EKG machine and neatly arranged Rubbermaid bins holding medical supplies, equipment and paperwork. A small cooler held temperature-sensitive vaccines.

With traditional black bag in hand, Levine walked up the driveway to the home of Sue Owen, 79. When he reached the screen door, his demeanor suddenly changed.

Where his conversation had been reserved in talking about the past, he was now the friendly, confident doctor in charge.

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“Hello, how are you?” he called out with a wide smile as the door opened. Inside was Owen, who has been in a wheelchair since a 1963 auto accident. She was clearly glad to see him.

Levine had first visited her several months ago because of a nerve problem in her hip that was causing pain. He prescribed physical therapy and advised her to change her position in the chair more often.

Owen, a former biologist, said she was surprised to find out there was a doctor who would still make house calls. “I remembered it from when I was young,” she said. “This is certainly a very valuable service.”

Levine examined her and then sat down and chatted for several minutes. “This kind of medicine has more of a social aspect to it than what I was used to,” he said later. “You talk with someone, looking for signs of how they are doing, how you might help.”

The tragedy in his life may have better prepared him for this gentler brand of medicine, he said quietly.

“I think it has made me a better physician. I’m a good listener.”

If there is a lesson he can impart it is about survival.

“I think that everyone should have a small, quiet voice inside that says, ‘There but for the grace of God go I,’ because terrible things can befall you that can change your entire life and the life of your family.

“You just have to go on.”