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CUTTING REMARKS
on Johnny's surgery. Never mind that the procedure was merely a cast
application! I finish my conversation by informing the family of the
prescriptions — one for pain for their child, and the other for Xanax
… for them.
HANDS OF DEATH AND DESTRUCTION
Who's Your Dr. Hodad?
W
hen Marty Makary, MD, was a student making the rounds at
one of Harvard Medical School's affiliated teaching hospitals, a member of his resident team kept referring to a well-
known surgeon on staff as "Dr. Hodad."
"Dr. Hodad?" Dr. Makary, now a surgeon at prestigious Johns Hopkins,
remembers asking.
"Yes," said the resident. "Hands of Death and Destruction."
Dr. Makary tells the tale of Dr. Hodad working in thousands of ORs
across the country in his book, "Unaccountable: What Hospitals Won't
Tell You and How Transparency Can Revolutionize Health
Care."
"Every hospital has a doctor that was locally referred to
as Hodad [in] the places that I rotated through," says
Dr. Makary. Even scarier: Nobody ever tells patients
about Dr. Hodad's incompetence, he says.
DR. HODAD? Marty Makary, MD, says bad
surgeons are more common than you think.
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O U T PAT I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E | J A N U A R Y 2013
