Surgeon indicted over 2003 liver transplant
The surgeon who ran the liver transplant program at St. Vincent Medical Center was indicted by a federal grand jury Wednesday for allegedly covering up the misallocation of a liver -- a significant breach of transplant rules that prompted the hospital to close the program four years ago.
Dr. Richard R. Lopez Jr., 54, is accused of lying to national transplant officials and directing his staff to falsify records involving a September 2003 transplant. For two years, the Cheviot Hills surgeon allegedly concealed the identity of the Saudi Arabian national who had received the organ despite being more than 50 places down on the transplant waiting list.
The transplanted organ was actually intended for a different Saudi Arabian man in the St. Vincent program, but that patient was in his home country at the time the liver became available.
Instead of advising national transplant authorities that the intended patient was unavailable for surgery, and therefore allowing the liver to be offered to other patients higher up on the list, Lopez approved acceptance of the liver and its transplantation into the St. Vincent patient who was 52nd on the match list, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.
“It is criminal to lie about who got the liver,” said Consuelo Woodhead, an assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles who is handling the case.
Though the indictment described three co-conspirators in the scheme -- all staff members of the liver program -- only Lopez was charged.
“The other conspirators acted at Lopez’s direction,” Woodhead said. “He was the architect of the coverup.”
The eight-count indictment accuses Lopez of conspiracy, concealment of material fact and falsification of records.
Lopez’s attorney, James T. Duff, said his client did nothing wrong.
“Dr. Lopez did not falsify any records,” Duff said, adding that Lopez provided the liver in question to save the patient’s life.
“That man is living today as a result of the doctor,” Duff said. “It was a sound medical decision.”
The indictment comes more than four years after an investigation of the case by The Times, which detailed the misallocation.
The charges do not address the organ misallocation itself, but focus instead on what prosecutors say happened after the transplant.
At first, the hospital reported the name of the actual recipient to the United Network for Organ Sharing, which oversees transplantation nationwide. But later that day, Lopez directed his staff to retract that notification and report the name of the man for whom the liver had been initially offered, the indictment says.
Though the intended recipient was removed from the waiting list, Lopez continued to tell him he was still in line, according to the indictment. He died several months later.
The hospital continued to file falsified documents, including a pathology report describing the liver that was supposedly removed from the intended patient, the indictment says.
On Wednesday, authorities said they remain unlear on why Lopez misallocated the organ.
St. Vincent executives discovered the alleged coverup in 2005 and reported it to transplant authorities.
Lopez left St. Vincent’s after the hospital closed the liver transplant program in 2005. He remains a licensed physician.
In a statement, St. Vincent called Lopez a “rogue physician” who was “acting outside the scope of his duties and hospital policy.”
The hospital declined to say whether the other staff members allegedly involved in the scheme remained employed there.
Organ transplant experts said the case was an isolated incident.
“This is the indictment of an individual and not a system,” said Bryan Stewart, a vice president at OneLegacy, a nonprofit that oversees organ procurement in the Los Angeles area.
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