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Alan Lindemann, an obstetrics-gynecology physician, exposes the overlooked side of state medical boards. Join us as we shed light on the damage done to physicians and patients. Discover the need for transparency, accountability, and improved oversight to ensure the fair functioning of medical boards and safeguard the well-being of all involved.

Alan Lindemann is an obstetrics-gynecology physician and can be reached at LindemannMD.com, doctales, and Pregnancy Your Way. Follow him on YouTube, Twitter @RuralDocAlan, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram @ruraldocalan, and Substack.

He discusses his KevinMD article, “Unveiling the hidden damage: the secretive world of medical boards.”

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Transcript

Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show. Subscribe at KevinMD.com/podcast and get CME for this episode by clicking on the CME links in the show notes. Today we welcome back Alan Lindemann. He’s an obstetrics-gynecology physician. His KevinMD article is titled “Unveiling the hidden damage: the secretive world of medical boards.” Alan, welcome back to the show.

Alan Lindemann: Thank you very much, Kevin. Happy to be here.

Kevin Pho: So we’ll get into the article a little bit, but for those who didn’t listen to our first episode together, just briefly share your story and journey to where you are today.

Alan Lindemann: I grew up in a small town in North Dakota. I’m a high school dropout who became an associate clinical professor at the University of North Dakota and the AHEC director for one quarter of the state, for teaching family practice doctors obstetrics.

Kevin Pho: All right, so let’s talk about your KevinMD article. We’ll jump right into it, “Unveiling the hidden damage: the secretive world of medical boards.” Now, how did this article come together?

Alan Lindemann: Well, unfortunately, I have experience with the medical board. I had COVID, Delta COVID, in September of 2021, and I wasn’t very sick with it. I stayed home, but I was tired, weak, and dizzy. So I worked for a while and didn’t realize how tired I was, but because I was weak and dizzy, I was accused of being drunk. I was not drunk. I was tested for 14 things, and they were all negative.

But essentially, I was fired from my job because I was physically ill with COVID, and the board, the North Dakota board, then took my license, my North Dakota medical license, because of the physical illness associated with COVID. So yes, I have that experience, unfortunately, with the medical board.

Kevin Pho: So tell me the events leading up to those tests. Like, how did people know that you were suspected to be drunk?

Alan Lindemann: Well, like I said, I was dizzy and weak, and so I really did have a hard time walking straight. If I turned quickly, I would need to brace myself on the wall with my hand so I wouldn’t lose my balance. And yes, they said I was slurring my speech and not finishing my sentences. But I never got an official warning. I never got anything in writing. I was never actually told why I was being fired.

Kevin Pho: Now, did someone report you? Did someone observe you in that state?

Alan Lindemann: There was a physician, another physician there, who did see me. Apparently, and I didn’t know this, she had been watching me trying to walk with my balance problems. But I was called into the CEO’s office, and she was there, and they said, “Oh, well, if you’re drunk, we’re going to fire you right now.” So they walked me out. They later came to my house and tested me for the 15 things, including alcohol, and of course every single thing was negative.

I was then sent to a neurologist, who said I was completely neurologically normal. They actually hired me back, but the environment was very hostile, and they fired me a second time.

I wrote a letter to the hospital staff and to the board, the local board, certified letters, because that’s how it’s supposed to happen. I’m supposed to get a warning, a written warning. I’m supposed to get two weeks to do better, and if I don’t, then we go to the hospital board here, and then they decide to fire me, to hire me, or to do something else. So anyway, because none of that happened, I sent certified letters, and that made the CEO very angry. So then he sent his letter to the medical board with seven complaints, which he had inspired others to make. In other words, all these things were done after the fact.

Yeah, it’s been a little recovery time, but in a way, it’s given me time to do other things which I enjoy doing.

Kevin Pho: So who made the diagnosis that your symptoms were related to COVID, and when you presented those facts, how were they received?

Alan Lindemann: Well, ironically, the doctor here who accused me of being drunk, when she wrote a letter to the medical board, said that I had long-term COVID. So the medical board had that information from the very beginning. They just didn’t act on it.

Kevin Pho: During this ordeal, did you have legal representation? Did you have someone to speak on your behalf, to help protect you from these accusations?

Alan Lindemann: I did have a lawyer. As a matter of fact, the day I was first accused of being drunk, we called my lawyer, and the lawyer said, “Tell the truth.” So what got me in trouble was telling the truth. And anyway, she was there through all of it. It eventually ended in January of this year, January of 2023.

Kevin Pho: Now tell us about your interactions with the medical board.

Alan Lindemann: Well, that’s, I think, the sad thing right now. Two things stick out. One is that I had five days to respond to those letters, so that’s really not due process. You know, there’s supposed to be several weeks or months for me to respond to the accusations, which in this case were largely false. There was never any evidence of patient harm. As a matter of fact, the letters written didn’t say anything about patient harm, and patient harm is one of the things the board is supposed to act on. If there’s no harm, they shouldn’t be acting. But again, the letters made me sound dangerous. So they gave me five days to respond, and of course we really couldn’t respond in five days.

Kevin Pho: Now, when you told your side of the story to the board, or when they heard your side of the story, did it have any effect?

Alan Lindemann: Well, that’s the whole thing. They pretty much shielded themselves from my side of the story when they gave me five days to respond. They also didn’t get my side of the story, so they just pretty much acted on the material they had.

In fairness to the board, they did send me to a neuropsychologist, and of course I was tired. I was fatigued, anxious, depressed, and angry, so I didn’t do well on the test, although I retook a different test three months later and did much better. But that was really the end of it, that test. And so they made their decision. They said I could reapply in three years, but in three years I’ll be 78, so no, that’s not likely to happen.

Kevin Pho: Now, where do you stand now? You’re not clinically practicing?

Alan Lindemann: No, not now, but my wife and I have written a book. It’s called Pregnancy Your Way, and the subtitle is Choose a Safe and Happy Birth. And, you know, right now we have so much in the news about births that have gone wrong and maternal mortality increasing, so I think the book is hitting the market at the right time. It’ll be available August 3.

Kevin Pho: Now, if you were to replay this ordeal all over again, as unpleasant as it may be, what would you have done differently?

Alan Lindemann: Well, I probably would have been more aggressive with my lawyer, because I should have had due process, which I didn’t have, and my lawyer should have made sure that I got due process. But I was really just incapacitated by this whole thing. It’s like getting hit on the head with a two-by-four.

Kevin Pho: Did your lawyer give any explanation why you didn’t receive due process?

Alan Lindemann: We didn’t talk about due process, and I never did get an explanation for the fact that there wasn’t due process.

Kevin Pho: Now, is your story common among interactions with medical boards across the country?

Alan Lindemann: Well, Kevin, medical boards work both ways. They overpunish some, and they underpunish some. We have a lot of information now on the internet about doctors who’ve been associated with a lot of surgical deaths, and I think a lot of times medical boards are slow to react when it comes to actual physical harm. Again, with me, there was no evidence of physical harm. As a matter of fact, there were no examples given of physical harm that I caused.

As a matter of fact, after they fired me and took my license, two of my patients died, a 33-year-old and a 38-year-old lady, who died as a result of DIC from untreated pneumonia. I had been seeing these people for six years and kept them alive. And yes, they were socioeconomically deprived, and some people don’t like those patients. I, on the other hand, understand them, and I have enjoyed giving them a tether, a reason to live, and I think they were missing that.

Kevin Pho: Now, during this ordeal, did you have any support from the physician community?

Alan Lindemann: One of the things that happened, and I’m just learning about this now, is that I’ve talked with a couple of the nurses who were forced to write those letters, and they apologized. They said they were afraid of contacting me because they had been threatened by the CEO. So no, I didn’t have any support from colleagues, and I had no support from the nurses. I tried calling one of the nurses one day, and unfortunately I was stupid enough to leave a message, and they called back and said, “You’re not supposed to call us here. We don’t want to talk to you.” So that was the end of that conversation. I knew what was happening.

Kevin Pho: Now, for those other physicians who may be in a similar situation to where you were, being accused by the hospital and the medical board, what kind of advice do you have for them?

Alan Lindemann: Well, I would say first of all, get a good lawyer. But nothing is going to fix this in the short term. Medical boards do operate in secret, and because everything is secret, their defense for my accusation of not having due process, for example, would be to say, “Oh, well, he did have due process.” So, you know, the rights of the individual doctors, and actually the rights of the public, are just gone. Anything can happen. I would say that the individuals who are accused don’t have much opportunity to protect themselves.

On the other hand, there are some people that are protected from within. I’m going to give you an example of that. You know, all medical boards operate in a political way. In other words, you get the position on the board by virtue of being appointed by the governor. So it’s if you know the governor, which means if you have contributed money to the governor’s campaign, you’re more likely to get a spot on the board. Big clinics have several spots on the board, and they protect themselves.

So the example here is a drug dealer. He had 70 marijuana plants in his basement. Now, most people who were caught distributing marijuana and other drugs to high school students would go to jail. This doctor got three months in the clinic for drug dependence, and then they led him back to an underserved area. It happened to be a birth control clinic, exactly the demographic that he was selling his drugs to. I don’t know whether he was actually selling there or not, but the upshot is that the judge said, or, incidentally, the DA’s wife worked for this guy’s boss, so it was all connected. Anyway, the upshot is this guy got a two-year suspended sentence. If he behaved himself for two years, all of this stuff disappeared.

Now, the end of the story is that eventually Medicare caught up with him and told the clinic that hired him, “You cannot hire a felon.” So in the eyes of the federal government, he was a felon, but he still got a license from the state until that happened. And I don’t even know what happened to his state license after that, but I do not think any state would be brazen enough to give somebody marked as a federal felon a license.

Kevin Pho: One of the pieces of advice that you mentioned earlier was to get a good lawyer. So what exactly do you mean by that? What kind of legal advice should physicians seek out if they were in similar situations to you?

Alan Lindemann: Well, with a good lawyer, you don’t really know until after everything is said and done whether your lawyer is helping you or not, but they should actually act on your behalf. I know that in certain situations, if you have a friend, for example, who has some kind of status and can go to the board and talk to the secretary, that often helps a lot. As a matter of fact, sometimes some of the secretaries that should get into trouble just leave the country. So yes, conversations behind closed doors work pretty well. Unfortunately, that’s generally not something that your lawyer is going to do, although it could perhaps be done.

Kevin Pho: And my final question, Alan. Tell us some of your take-home messages that you want to leave with the KevinMD audience.

Alan Lindemann: I’d like to see all boards watched. In other words, when these boards are made by the legislature, they are free to act however they want to act, and they don’t answer to anybody. And if they do a lot of damage, they’re not responsible for that. So what I’d like to see is some legislative action that actually creates a body to watch the medical boards and to assess for the damage that they cause to the public, either by their inaction or by their action.

Kevin Pho: Alan, thank you so much for sharing your story, time, and insight. Thanks again for coming back on the show.

Alan Lindemann: Thank you, Kevin.