“We haven’t found a single case where the concurrency has caused harm, so I don’t think patients should be alarmed about it,” Dr. Peter Slavin, Mass. General’s president, said during an interview in the hospital’s historic Bulfinch Building.

Another surgeon, Dr. Dennis Burke, fought the hospital for years in a suit opposed to double booking. MGH officials said that Burke violated hospital rules and possibly federal privacy laws by supplying the Boston Globe with copies of some internal records.


In 2016, the Senate Finance Committee held hearings and published a report on the subject, saying that it had several concerns about the practice, reported Stat News.

Initially filed in 2015, the government refused to intervene in Wollman’s case and the court dismissed it. She amended her complaint, which resulted in a court decision, United States ex rel. Wollman v. Massachusetts General Hospital. The case became the basis for other overlapping surgery cases that have since been resolved in New York and Arizona and laid the legal groundwork for the government to challenge improper overlapping surgeries.

"This lawsuit was a catalyst for an important dialogue that will cause a world-renowned institution to set a precedent for a new standard of care in informed consent for overlapping surgeries," said Reuben Guttman of Guttman, Buschner & Brooks, PLLC, the lead counsel for Dr. Wollman.

Back to HCB News

Business Affairs Homepage