The hospital and orthopedic surgeon Raul Marquez, MD, were sued by a medical devices salesman who alleged Dr. Marquez arranged for unlicensed physicians from Mexico to practice in the U.S. and perform surgical and other procedures on patients, according to the report. The salesman said he witnessed the alleged wrongdoing when he would join the surgeon in the operating room to open medical device packaging and answer questions about their use.
Dr. Marquez said that he was inviting Mexican medical professionals to observe and question his surgical procedures as part of an educational fellowship program, according to the report. Dr. Marquez’s explanation was supported by hospital records.
The surgeon also said that while he allowed the unlicensed physicians to touch bone to learn fine points of how to do the surgery, they were not actually doing surgery. He testified that he would allow them to conduct mapping of the patient pre-surgery but would then erase those marks and do it himself.
The salesman presented operating room logs for 14 surgeries showing unlicensed individuals in the OR, along with photos he had taken of those individuals holding surgical devices over patients. The judge determined that the evidence failed to prove fraud, noting that in each operation, Dr. Marquez was in the room “before or at the ‘cut time,’ which is when the surgical procedure actually begins.”
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