Cyril Raben, MD, left a trail of dead or harmed patients across the Midwest.
Jerry Evans died in 2012 in Ohio after spinal surgery by Raben. Donna Marie Oeltjenburnslost more than 2.5 quarts of blood and bled to death when an artery was accidentally cut during surgery in Minnesota in 2009. Terry Paulino was paralyzed from the chest down after spine surgery in Arkansas in 2007.
In all three cases, the physician and his insurance company reached settlements that paid out undisclosed amounts. Yet despite his troubled record, Raben received more than $1.3 million from Medicare from 2013 to 2015, the most recent year available, a MedPage Today/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigation found.
Most of that -- $874,000 -- came in 2015, the year after he surrendered his medical license in Ohio.
Raben died last year, but was seeing patients right up to his death.
He is one of at least 216 doctors who remained on Medicare payment rolls in 2015 despite surrendering a license, having one revoked, or being excluded from state-paid health care rolls in the previous five years. In all, those doctors were paid $25.8 million in 2015 alone.
"It makes no sense to continue enabling any doctor who is doing harm to patients," said Richard Deyo, MD, MPH, a professor of evidence-based medicine at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland.