A doctor who amputated the wrong foot of a diabetic patient and cut off another patient's toe without her consent was fined $10,000 Saturday and barred from practicing medicine for six months.
The 15-doctor state Board of Medicine voted unanimously to reduce the sentence recommended last month by a state hearing officer. The board cited Dr. Rolando Sanchez's previously unblemished record and his damaged reputation, and noted that the diabetic's other leg would probably have been amputated anyway.The hearing officer had proposed a two-year punishment and a $15,000 fine, and recommended that Sanchez be directly supervised by another surgeon during a five-year probation.
Sanchez can apply the 140 days he has been suspended under an emergency order, so he could be back in the operating room by early 1996.
He has 30 days to appeal to a state appeals court. His lawyer called the punishment fair and declined to say if he will appeal.
State and federal investigators found a series of procedural problems at University Community Hospital in Tampa contributed to the wrong-foot amputation on Willie King in February. King, 52, later had his gangrenous other foot amputated at another hospital.
In the second amputation, several months later, the board found that Sanchez failed to warn the patient that amputation was a possibility.