Dr. Fata | Top Doc | S2-E1 AI transcript and summary - episode of podcast Dr. Death

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Episode: Dr. Fata | Top Doc | S2-E1

Author: Wondery
Duration: 00:37:47

Episode Shownotes

Patty Hester starts her care with Dr. Fata, but quickly realizes something is wrong. She’s not the only one.Listen to exclusive bonus episodes of Dr. Death exclusively and ad-free by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/dr-death/ now.See Privacy Policy

at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Summary

In the first episode of "Dr. Death" Season 2, titled "Dr. Fata | Top Doc | S2-E1" by Wondery, we follow Patty Hester's alarming journey under the care of Dr. Farid Fata, a supposed cancer specialist. Initially hopeful, Patty is devastated to discover her cancer diagnosis is a complete fabrication. The episode reveals the vulnerabilities of patients placing their trust in healthcare professionals, showcasing the ramifications of misplaced faith as Patty undergoes unnecessary and painful treatments. As her health declines, uncertainties about Dr. Fata's practices arise, ultimately prompting a nurse, Angela Swantek, to report him for malpractice and insurance fraud, highlighting critical ethical issues within the healthcare system.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Dr. Fata | Top Doc | S2-E1) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:05 Speaker_06
Imagine you're not feeling well and it won't go away. A little fatigue, some achiness. A loved one tells you, go see a doctor. So, okay, you go to your doctor and you get some blood work done. When the results come back, there are a few questions.

00:00:25 Speaker_06
Your doctor recommends you go see a specialist.

00:00:29 Speaker_05
My internal medicine doctor said, you know, hey, I sent my mom to him. He's a world-renowned Sloan Kettering graduate. A specialist who cares, who's attentive.

00:00:40 Speaker_06
You know, he had these very soulful eyes. Located in a state-of-the-art inviting office.

00:00:47 Speaker_07
It was a beautiful building, a beautiful office that had this lovely healing garden attached to it.

00:00:54 Speaker_06
The doctor takes one look at your lab work. He makes a face and then he says three of the most horrifying words a patient can hear. You have cancer.

00:01:06 Speaker_06
You're devastated, but you're also grateful because you believe you caught it early and you're being treated by the best.

00:01:15 Speaker_11
I would say that his education and experience in Michigan is unparalleled, second to none. Dr. Fareed Fata is the leading authority in the treatment of cancer in the U.S. and has saved the lives of hundreds of patients.

00:01:28 Speaker_06
close attention, cutting-edge treatments. My care has been phenomenal. The staff is warm and friendly. The care and the caring has just been amazing. All thanks to Dr. Fareed Fata.

00:01:43 Speaker_04
Dr. Fata is just a godsend. There should be 150,000 at Dr. Fata's.

00:01:51 Speaker_06
But fortunately, it will turn out there's only one. Because after months of appointments, hours spent in chemo chairs, poison pumping through your veins, accepting that you might not survive, you learn something that you can barely comprehend.

00:02:10 Speaker_06
You don't have cancer. You never did. And you're not the only one.

00:02:22 Speaker_08
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00:02:52 Speaker_08
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00:03:42 Speaker_09
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00:03:50 Speaker_06
From Wondery, I'm Laura Beal, and this is Season 2 of Dr. Death. Since the first season of Dr. Death came out, we've received hundreds of tips about doctors who've abused our medical system. I still get a few every week.

00:04:15 Speaker_06
On season two, we've investigated the story that people have asked us about more than any other. A story about one doctor in Michigan who manipulated the system to terrifying ends and put hundreds of lives at risk. This is episode one of six, Top Doc.

00:04:39 Speaker_06
Patty Hester is a petite woman with straight blonde hair and blue eyes. She's lived in Clarkston, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, nearly her entire life.

00:04:49 Speaker_05
And she's a fitness junkie. My father was a Jackie and very healthy and lived to be 84. So I'd always been into fitness and health. We ran races and rode bikes, like hundred mile trips. I played softball, I played hockey.

00:05:06 Speaker_06
In 2009, Patty was working as an emergency room technician. She monitored patients' vitals. The things she saw in the ER were enough to keep her motivated to take care of herself.

00:05:20 Speaker_06
But then, something happened to her that inspired her to become a fitness instructor. Her mom was in a car accident.

00:05:27 Speaker_05
And because she had a history of congestive heart failure, my mom was in a coma from January 5th until June 9th.

00:05:37 Speaker_06
Patty and her family were very close. Almost daily, she stayed at her mother's bedside, praying she would recover.

00:05:45 Speaker_05
I looked at my mom and I'm like, I was so tired of sickness that it was like I wanted something that was life-giving. I knew then beyond anything that I had to pursue fitness.

00:06:00 Speaker_05
That is where my drive really kicked in to become a trainer because I just could not bare the thought of someone being long-term ill like this, sick. And I didn't want that for myself either.

00:06:14 Speaker_06
So at age 55, Patty began studying to become a fitness instructor. A few months into her studies, Patty got pneumonia. Her doctor did some blood work and a few of the tests were concerning.

00:06:28 Speaker_06
She suggested that Patty see a hematologist, a physician who specializes in blood conditions. The hematologist Patty really wanted to see was out of the country, so she did some research and found one who looked pretty promising.

00:06:43 Speaker_05
My internal medicine doctor said, you know, hey, I sent my mom to him. He's world-renowned, Dr. Fareed Fada, Sloan Kettering graduate. It's your choice, Patty. but I would go to him.

00:06:56 Speaker_06
If her 30 years working in healthcare had taught her anything, it was to be extra sure that this Dr. Fareed Fatah was legit. She read all the reviews she could find. She asked around about him at the hospital she worked at.

00:07:11 Speaker_06
She called up her niece, who's an internal medicine doctor in St. Louis, who said she'd heard good things.

00:07:17 Speaker_05
There is nothing, nothing to ever question that this person was anything but like, oh wow, you're lucky to get in to see this person.

00:07:26 Speaker_06
So in late February 2010, Patti went to see Dr. Fata at his practice, Michigan Hematology Oncology. She arrived late in the afternoon and almost every seat in the waiting room was full. She took a seat and began filling out her paperwork.

00:07:44 Speaker_06
A big screen TV in the waiting area played an ad for Dr. Fata's charity, Swan for Life.

00:07:51 Speaker_05
Well, this video about the story of this patient's husband making this wooden swan, him holding it up and telling the story how, you know, his patient who had passed away, her husband had carved this for him and the whole thing wrapped around donating money.

00:08:08 Speaker_05
But it played over and over again. And when you're waiting for an appointment, how long can you watch this? After half an hour, Patty got up and approached the woman at the front desk. I said, can you please change that channel?

00:08:22 Speaker_05
And the employees all spoke in a whisper. And I really quite didn't understand that one either, because I worked in the medical field. And you whisper if it's confidential. But she said, no, I can't. I can't change the channel.

00:08:36 Speaker_06
Confused, Patty turned to go back to her seat. After a 45-minute wait, she finally got into an exam room.

00:08:44 Speaker_05
In his room, there's the top deck, framed pictures of him, you know, top deck, this place, top deck.

00:08:52 Speaker_06
It was another half-hour wait before Dr. Fata appeared. He entered the room in a white lab coat over a shirt and tie. He was short and had a very round face. He introduced himself.

00:09:04 Speaker_05
He was very, very soft-spoken, almost to the fact that it was a whisper. He was reaching out his hand, trying to be very personable, and he would lean in and say, you know, wow, Patricia, you're in the right place.

00:09:20 Speaker_06
Patty wasn't sure what to expect, but she didn't want to miss anything in case he did have surprising news for her. She came prepared, really prepared, in fact.

00:09:29 Speaker_05
I had a little recording device in my pocket and I told him, I said, I'm recording our conversation in case I don't catch it all. So could you speak up? And he said, Oh, you don't need that.

00:09:43 Speaker_05
You know, I'll give you all your lab results and you'll get all this stuff. I'm like, I just like to do that.

00:09:50 Speaker_06
He brought in blood work that she just had done at his lab and looked it over in front of her. He was quiet, shaking his head a little.

00:09:58 Speaker_05
And he looked up at me and he said, he slaps, he said, this is really bad.

00:10:04 Speaker_06
I'm like, what? Dr. Fata said that Patty had myelodysplastic syndrome, a blood cancer that can progress to leukemia. Patty was stunned and more than a little confused. She had a good friend who had the same disease.

00:10:20 Speaker_06
She'd spent time with her and even did a bone marrow drive for her. Patty remembered her friend feeling very tired and sick, but Patty felt fine. She was still taking fitness classes.

00:10:32 Speaker_05
And he's like, you're gonna need a bone marrow biopsy right away, and I think that you may end up on chemo.

00:10:40 Speaker_06
It didn't make sense. How could he be certain that she would need chemo when she hadn't even had a bone marrow biopsy? A biopsy would show if her blood was healthy. With blood cancer,

00:10:53 Speaker_05
It's not something you can see. You can't see it like a tumor.

00:10:59 Speaker_06
She made an appointment for a bone marrow biopsy and left. She kept everything to herself.

00:11:05 Speaker_05
My husband asked me, why, why are you so quiet? And I'm like, oh, I'm just thinking about all those sick people in there. And, you know, inside, yeah, it was gut wrenching. I was like,

00:11:17 Speaker_05
You know, it was like there was a part of me that was in denial that this is really happening to me.

00:11:22 Speaker_06
When Patty went back to Dr. Fata's office a few days later for her bone marrow biopsy, her husband went with her. He was getting worried.

00:11:31 Speaker_05
He's like, oh, you know, what if you're really sick? And I'm like, well, we'll see, you know, we'll go from there.

00:11:39 Speaker_06
Patty got situated in the exam room while the medical assistant prepared the area. She was expecting some sort of sedative. She'd seen bone marrow biopsies done before at the hospital and knew how painful they can be.

00:11:53 Speaker_06
Typically, the doctors do everything they can to make the patient comfortable by administering some kind of anesthetic. Before she knew it, there was Dr. Fata.

00:12:03 Speaker_05
He said, are you ready? And I said, well, I think I'm getting a little apprehensive. And he's like, oh, it'll be fine. I do it. It'll be just like butter. And I'm like, OK.

00:12:14 Speaker_06
Patty turned over on her stomach. The doctor cleaned the area of her lower back where he would be doing the biopsy. Next, he took a scalpel and made a small incision. Then, Dr. Fata inserted a thick needle.

00:12:29 Speaker_05
It was like the most excruciating pain I've ever felt in my life. I was digging my hands into the exam table. I'm like, oh my God. I said, I don't think I can tolerate this. And he said, it's almost in, it's almost in.

00:12:46 Speaker_06
He twisted the needle back and forth, trying to reach the spongy part of the bone.

00:12:51 Speaker_05
Oh my God, seriously, I think I'm going to pass out. And he's like, well, you're already laying down. You're going to be OK. And I'm like, I don't think so. I can't. You got to take the needle out of my back. And he's like, I'm almost in.

00:13:04 Speaker_05
And he's like, I just punctured the bone. I'm like, oh my God. The pain was unbearable.

00:13:12 Speaker_06
Patty was sweating profusely, thinking she was going to throw up. I felt like it was barbaric. Dr. Fata finished up and packed up the samples.

00:13:22 Speaker_05
I was just like, oh my God. I said, I can't believe you didn't numb me up. And he's like, oh, I did. I said, no, you wiped me down with betadine. I felt the whole thing. She turned to the medical assistant. I said, I can't believe it was done like this.

00:13:37 Speaker_05
And he's like, well, generally people don't have as much pain as you. Maybe the medical assistant was right, Patty thought.

00:13:44 Speaker_06
Maybe she was too wimpy. The pain carried on for days. She saw a chiropractor who tried to work it out, but nothing seemed to help. At her next appointment, some time later, she told Dr. Fata that her back was still hurting from the biopsy.

00:14:02 Speaker_06
He said he had just the thing for her. His charity, Swan for Life, offered massages. A massage sounded great to Patty. She got the massage in Dr. Fada's office the next day.

00:14:17 Speaker_06
It wasn't a great massage, but it was fine for a complimentary service offered by a charity. But as Patti walked out, she was stopped by the woman at the front desk.

00:14:29 Speaker_05
And the girl said, that'll be $75. And I said, um, excuse me? She said, that'll be $75 for your massage. And I said, no, no, no, no. It's Sue Swan for life. She said, oh yeah, but no, you have to pay for it.

00:14:45 Speaker_06
Patti thought, that's bizarre. If the charity services aren't for the patients, then who are they for? A week later, Patty and her husband went back for the results from the bone marrow biopsy.

00:14:59 Speaker_06
When she got there, she was still wearing her fitness gear from the workout classes she had instructed that afternoon. She was feeling good, confident even. Her husband was nervous. Dr. Fata entered the exam room.

00:15:16 Speaker_05
Looking over her labs, he said, I'm really sorry, but we need to start you on chemo tomorrow. You are young, you know, relatively young. Your cells are rapidly reproducing. You'll convert over to AML in no time.

00:15:32 Speaker_06
AML, acute myeloid leukemia, a more serious disease. And I said,

00:15:40 Speaker_05
No, draw my blood today. I said, I'm feeling really well. And my husband, he thought I was in denial that I had cancer. And I'm like, no, just have them draw my blood. Well, that's when Fareed Fattah looked a little bit shocked.

00:15:57 Speaker_05
Because he looked at me and he said, what do you mean? And I said, I don't know. I said, maybe the bone marrow biopsy is wrong.

00:16:03 Speaker_06
Dr. Fata showed her the labs, or the ones he had. These came from Crittenden Hospital, where he had admitting privileges. But he said he was still waiting on a few from a lab in New York.

00:16:14 Speaker_06
He said that that lab was the only one that performed a certain part of the test. This didn't make sense to Patty either. She'd been there every step of the way with her friend, so she knew what should come next.

00:16:27 Speaker_05
And it wasn't chemo. And so he looks at my husband as now, like, like she's not getting it. She needs to start chemo. And I'm like, just draw my blood. Seriously. I said, because if I need chemo, then I want to go on a list for a stem cell.

00:16:43 Speaker_06
A transfusion of stem cells in the bone marrow. A proven treatment for AML.

00:16:49 Speaker_05
He's like, you can't do that. I said, I'm my friend. I had the same diagnosis, same thing, and this is what ended up happening.

00:16:56 Speaker_06
Patty was starting to get irritated, but Dr. Fata agreed to do more blood work. After 40 minutes, Dr. Fata came back.

00:17:06 Speaker_05
He said, oh my dear, today is your lucky day. And I'm like, what do you mean? He said, look, look, your counts are up today. And then he looked at my husband, and he looked at me again, and he said,

00:17:20 Speaker_05
Your labs are really good today, but you do need to start iron infusions right away. Look at your iron, it's so low." I said, well, that's so strange because I don't feel like mine. He's like, well, it is, look.

00:17:34 Speaker_06
I'm like, okay, okay. Patty made an appointment for the following day to get her first iron infusion and left with her husband. In the car on the way home, he was upset.

00:17:46 Speaker_05
My husband looks at me and he said, I cannot believe he just told you you have myelodysplastic syndrome and that you need chemo. He showed you and you're not doing it. I said, I'm not doing it.

00:18:01 Speaker_05
Why would I do that if I'm not going to get that stem cell transplant? I mean, it isn't like a cancer you could cut out. You know, you can't cut out your blood. I'm like, And chemo's gonna make me really sick. I could die from chemo.

00:18:25 Speaker_01
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00:18:34 Speaker_01
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00:19:12 Speaker_01
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00:19:42 Speaker_10
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00:20:00 Speaker_06
Patty Hester's diagnosis worried her whole family. The most well-respected hematologist oncologist in Michigan was telling her that she had a very aggressive form of cancer. Even if she felt fine, they feared that Patty wouldn't be healthy for long.

00:20:19 Speaker_06
So they decided to quickly plan for a trip to Disney World for her niece Sarah's fifth birthday, just a few weeks away. When she told Dr. Fata her plan, he didn't think it was a good idea.

00:20:32 Speaker_05
I said, if I get sick, I'm in Florida, I'll go to an urgent care there or whatever and get on antibiotics. And he's like, no, don't go to an urgent care. I said, OK, I'll go to an ER. And he said, no, don't go to an ER.

00:20:46 Speaker_05
I said, well, what would you like me to do? He said, just call me. If you get sick, just call me. I will call you in a script. He said, make your memory then. If you're going to do it, go ahead and do it. But he said, you could get really sick and die.

00:20:59 Speaker_05
Patty's family was impressed. What a great, caring doctor. I mean, that's what my family said. Oh, that's so kind of him, you know, that he's going to do that. If you get sick, call him any time, a day or night. Just call him.

00:21:14 Speaker_06
On the flight to Orlando, Patty had to wear a mask to protect her from getting sick.

00:21:18 Speaker_05
And Sarah looked at me and said, Patty, why do you have to wear that? And I said, well, so I don't spread germs. And she said, oh, I like your germs. I'm like, well, and then I don't get sick, you know. She said, you're not sick.

00:21:34 Speaker_05
Patty wanted this trip to be all about her niece, not her illness. We had to make sure we saw the fireworks every night. You know, we had to make sure that all wonder of a child.

00:21:47 Speaker_06
But there were times when Patty's relatives couldn't hide their worry.

00:21:52 Speaker_05
And my brother-in-law, he cried in his seat on the plane, the fact that, you know, he's got to take lots of pictures because this could be it.

00:21:59 Speaker_06
Patty spent a fortune on this trip. And when she got home, she kept spending. And she didn't stop there.

00:22:06 Speaker_05
I started giving things away. They would like, there's certain paintings that I had done. I gave away my wedding rings. I gave away my ski outfit. And dead people don't ski, right?

00:22:19 Speaker_06
She paid for every trip. Everybody got the best Christmas presents, the best birthday gifts.

00:22:26 Speaker_05
I'd live this if I was dying.

00:22:28 Speaker_06
And yet, most days, Patti felt great. She tried her best to stay positive. That summer, she finished her fitness studies and started her own company, Fitness For You. She started teaching workout classes at her church.

00:22:44 Speaker_05
Weights, pull-ups, sit-ups, chin-ups, stability balls.

00:22:49 Speaker_06
Ironically, it was usually after getting iron infusions at Dr. Fata's office that she'd feel her worst. One day that summer, she was getting an infusion when she started to feel dizzy.

00:23:01 Speaker_06
She asked them to stop the infusion and bring her some water, but the nurses were too busy. Patty desperately needed water and just wanted to get out of there. So she left.

00:23:13 Speaker_05
So I'm going down these stairs and I'm so nauseated. I stop in the bathroom on the main floor, the lobby, go in there and throw up.

00:23:21 Speaker_06
About six months into her treatment, Patti arrived home to find a police car in her driveway. It was for her husband.

00:23:29 Speaker_05
He got a DUI. I had no idea that my husband had started drinking. Patti didn't know what to think.

00:23:37 Speaker_06
The husband she knew was a hiker, a runner, but had started drinking and smoking after Patti was diagnosed.

00:23:45 Speaker_05
I knew he withdrew from me. He would say to me that I cannot bear the thought that there's something that could save you or give you more time and you would not do it. You know, this guy is renowned. This guy is the top.

00:24:01 Speaker_06
Still, nothing could make her start chemo, even though Dr. Fata continued to insist on it. He called her a Pollyanna and said she was in denial. Constantly, he reminded her that she was terminally ill.

00:24:15 Speaker_06
Patty couldn't understand how this could be when she didn't feel sick. Dr. Fata tried to explain it to her once during an exam. The window of his office looked out over a hilly ski resort that was once a landfill.

00:24:31 Speaker_06
You know that's built on garbage, right? Dr. Fata said, looking out the window at the resort. It looks good on the outside. It's like you. You look in the mirror and you think, I'm doing okay. But inside, you're really sick.

00:24:47 Speaker_06
In the spring of 2013, three years after first meeting Dr. Fata, Patty was in his office getting an infusion. She liked to listen to music during her treatment, but she would turn her chair toward the door to see who was coming in.

00:25:03 Speaker_06
This day was no different, so far. About 40 minutes into her infusion, a crowd of younger people filed into the room with an older patient.

00:25:13 Speaker_05
The person was in a wheelchair. They looked horrible. They were completely emaciated. They were so skinny and slumped over in this wheelchair.

00:25:23 Speaker_06
Patty turned off her music so she could hear what was happening. Whatever it was, it didn't look good.

00:25:29 Speaker_05
And she said, how long has he been that way? And the girl said, oh, we had to address him. He was like this when we got there to the house. And I'm like, oh my God.

00:25:41 Speaker_06
Patty, who still worked in the ER, wondered, what is this person doing here? He should be at the hospital. Just then, a woman with the patient spoke up.

00:25:51 Speaker_05
She said, we called and Dr. Fata said he still needed his treatment. I was sitting there, I was like floored. I couldn't believe it. It was beyond my capacity to understand this. Why would this person have treatment?

00:26:04 Speaker_05
The nurse scurried out of the infusion room.

00:26:07 Speaker_06
When she came back, she was escorting two emergency medical workers carrying in a gurney. Patty recognized one of them and flagged him down.

00:26:16 Speaker_05
I'm like, are you going down for the person on the end? I said, I think that person's dead. And he's like, really? And I'm like, seriously?

00:26:27 Speaker_06
Remember, Patty had been coming to Dr. Fata's office for three years. And this, this shocked her. Around the same time that Patty was diagnosed, someone else arrived at Dr. Fata's office for the first time. She saw a different side of the practice.

00:26:46 Speaker_06
And right away, she knew that something was very, very wrong.

00:27:01 Speaker_00
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00:27:48 Speaker_06
Angela Swantek is a trim woman with dark curls and brown eyes. Few people stumbled into their careers quite like she did. It all started with an accident when she was six years old.

00:28:00 Speaker_02
My sister pushed me and my leg went through the window and I cut my leg and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I had to go get seven stitches. I loved being at the hospital.

00:28:13 Speaker_02
And it was one of those things that I thought, oh, I think I want to be a nurse.

00:28:18 Speaker_06
So that's what she did. And that's who she was. Nursing shaped her parenting.

00:28:24 Speaker_02
My daughters say it was a rough childhood having a mom as a nurse, because if your arm or leg wasn't hanging from your body or you weren't actively bleeding, they really got no sympathy from me. It shaped her dinner conversation.

00:28:39 Speaker_02
I had a patient who had a tumor on his neck and one day it just exploded all over the window and it looked like a crime scene. So that was a good story.

00:28:54 Speaker_06
And it affected how she thought about casual expressions.

00:28:58 Speaker_02
He was coughing and gagging. It was like he was choking on something. And we saw that there was blood coming out of his mouth. So we got him back to bed and I did a finger sweep and pulled out a piece of tissue.

00:29:14 Speaker_02
It was a piece of his lung that had broken off. So, you know, you really can cough up a lung.

00:29:22 Speaker_06
People don't get the humor in that, so. By 2010, Angela had been an oncology nurse for 19 years. She worked at a pretty big oncology practice in a Detroit suburb. She liked the job, but it was the commute that was getting to her.

00:29:38 Speaker_06
As a single mom, getting two daughters to all of their sports practices after school was becoming a strain. So one day at work, she pulled a drug rep aside and asked if she knew any doctors closer to home who were looking for an oncology nurse.

00:29:53 Speaker_02
She had told me that Dr. Fata was looking for a nurse. And I said, well, I don't even know who that is. And she told me where his office was, which was literally about five miles from my house. So I was so excited.

00:30:07 Speaker_06
Angela was already sold, but since she'd never heard of Dr. Fata, she inquired a little more about it. The drug rep said she'd heard some things.

00:30:19 Speaker_02
She like scrunched up her nose, almost like if you eat something bad, you know, that kind of a face like, yuck. but never really said, you know, she had nothing specific to add to.

00:30:31 Speaker_06
But she really wanted this job to work out. She needed somewhere closer to home.

00:30:36 Speaker_02
I just thought, okay, I'm gonna make my own opinion. I'm gonna go in with a very open mind.

00:30:43 Speaker_06
Angela had an interview a week later. Overall, she liked what she saw, but she wanted to get a better feel for the daily grind. So she asked if she could shadow a nurse at the practice. A few days later Angela arrived at Dr. Fata's office.

00:30:59 Speaker_02
And I was so excited because I thought this could be my drive every single morning. I mean it literally took me five minutes and I thought maybe in the summer I could even ride my bike here.

00:31:10 Speaker_06
The nurse she was supposed to shadow was already busy so Angela waited for her in the infusion room.

00:31:16 Speaker_02
I thought wow it's eight o'clock and This place is already bumping. I mean, if I can remember correctly, they had probably about 16 or 17 chemotherapy chairs in their infusion room.

00:31:33 Speaker_06
Every chair was already full, but right away she noticed some irregularities. Chemotherapy by infusion is a cocktail of powerful chemicals packaged in a drip bag. It must be disposed of in a hazardous material container.

00:31:50 Speaker_06
The infusion chairs where patients receive chemo are kind of like big lazy boy recliners. Each one is supposed to have a yellow bucket to dispose of the chemo so nobody else has to touch it.

00:32:02 Speaker_06
But as far as Angela could tell, not a single chair in Dr. Fata's infusion room had one of these buckets. She scanned the room searching for the bright yellow containers.

00:32:13 Speaker_02
When I turned around, there was the nurse's station and then the pharmacy mixes the chemotherapy and that's when I saw the one and only yellow bucket. And I thought, wow, the nurses take the chemo down, they walk

00:32:28 Speaker_02
through the infusion room and then come over here and dispose of the chemo. I'm like, ooh, that's not very safe. And you can get fined for that.

00:32:37 Speaker_06
Angela hadn't been there but about five minutes. Just then, the head nurse appeared and introduced herself. There wasn't much time for getting to know each other with a room full of patients, so she got straight to business.

00:32:51 Speaker_06
The nurse printed off some labels for the chemotherapy drugs, and then she took a black sharpie and began numbering them one through six. Angela had never seen this before. She asked why she was doing that.

00:33:04 Speaker_06
And the nurse said, well, this way the medical assistant knows which bag to hang next.

00:33:09 Speaker_02
And I said, wait, what? Medical assistants are not allowed to dispense any type of medication, let alone chemotherapy. Didn't the nurse know this? Angela wondered. The nurse said, well, you know, we're busy and that's how we do it here.

00:33:27 Speaker_02
Our medical assistants hang chemo. I don't have a really good poker face and I know that my mouth kind of dropped open and my eyes, you know, got really big. So to me, there was strike number two.

00:33:41 Speaker_06
She moved on to the next task with a nurse who was hanging an infusion bag for a patient. Out of curiosity, Angela looked at the label on the bag to see what type of drug the patient was receiving.

00:33:53 Speaker_02
The name was Velcade, V-E-L-C-A-D-E. And I looked at it and looked at it again and I thought, what the heck is that in a bag for?

00:34:08 Speaker_06
Angela was very familiar with this type of chemo drug. You're supposed to administer it with a syringe, not a bag.

00:34:16 Speaker_02
The maximum dose is anywhere between three to five cc's of fluid. And the nurse just pushes it in. It's supposed to go over like three to five seconds, not in an IV bag over an hour.

00:34:30 Speaker_06
Normally, the dose for this drug is about the size of a tablespoon.

00:34:34 Speaker_02
And now you've added it to this large volume. Has that now diluted the drug? Is that even working? Because it's now so diluted. I mean, this is why drugs have to be given a certain way, because that's how they work.

00:34:50 Speaker_06
Angela was concerned about whether the drug would even work, but there was another issue. A treatment that would normally be done in a matter of minutes would instead take an hour. It would be much more expensive.

00:35:03 Speaker_06
The nurse said, that's how Dr. Fata ordered it. That's how we do it here.

00:35:09 Speaker_02
And that was with every single patient. And then she went to go hang just a bag of fluid on hydration on a patient. And I said, oh, well, why are they getting the hydration? You know, were they having nausea, vomiting, diarrhea?

00:35:26 Speaker_06
Are they hypotensive? The nurse said, no, we always have patients who come back the day after chemotherapy to replenish their fluids. It makes them feel better.

00:35:36 Speaker_02
I'm like, wait, what? Why are you giving them hydration if they don't need it?

00:35:42 Speaker_06
Too much fluid can be hard on a patient's organs. It wasn't the only disagreement the two of them had. In patient after patient, Angela says she raised concerns.

00:35:53 Speaker_02
And her and I were like two kids, like two toddlers, arguing back, yes it is, no it isn't, yes it is, no it isn't. And then she pulled out the drug handbook and then immediately looked up the drug and closed it.

00:36:06 Speaker_02
And she said, well, that's just how we do it here.

00:36:09 Speaker_06
Angela didn't know what to make of this. Was the nurse just careless and blaming Dr. Fata? Or was it something worse? Either way, she'd seen enough.

00:36:19 Speaker_02
And I said, you know what? Thank you for your time, but this is not going to work because I was trained very differently.

00:36:27 Speaker_06
She grabbed her purse and turned to walk out. Angela had been there maybe all of an hour, but before she left, she had some parting words for the nurse.

00:36:37 Speaker_02
The only advice that I'm going to give you is in a court of law, the jury will convict you.

00:36:48 Speaker_06
In her 19 years of nursing, Angela had never encountered anything like what she saw, and she had no idea how to confront this kind of situation. I had to Google how to report a physician.

00:37:02 Speaker_06
She went to a website for Michigan's department that handles doctor complaints, the same office that issues her nursing license. The instructions weren't all that clear, but eventually she found a complaint form, printed it off, and began writing.

00:37:18 Speaker_02
He is defrauding the insurance company by infusing all of these medications longer than what they are supposed to be. Insurance fraud. I put in there that he should be investigated by Blue Cross Blue Shield, Medicare and Medicaid.

00:37:35 Speaker_02
I made two notations that he was doing his patients more harm than good.

00:37:42 Speaker_06
The form gave her the option to remain anonymous. Angela marked no. She wanted to tell someone what she saw in the office that day. When she was finished, she made a copy, put it in an envelope, and dropped it in a mailbox.

00:37:57 Speaker_02
And then I thought, oh my God, what did I just do?

00:38:00 Speaker_06
A nurse reporting a doctor is a big deal.

00:38:04 Speaker_02
Doctors are put on a pretty high pedestal. They're a revenue generator for the hospital. They're nurses. We cost the hospital money because we don't generate any income for the hospital. And if you look at a doctor and a nurse, He's the doctor.

00:38:20 Speaker_02
He's the doctor. You are just a nurse. And so here's me filing a pretty serious allegation against a pretty well-respected oncologist in the community. It's career suicide.

00:38:37 Speaker_06
She suspected that most people in her position would keep quiet.

00:38:41 Speaker_02
People just quit. People would just leave the office. But then nobody would do anything. I finally did something. Angela was terrified. Oh, my God. Is he going to find out that I turned him in? He has my resume. He has my address. He could ruin my career.

00:39:01 Speaker_02
But you know what? I didn't care. I didn't care. Somebody had to be the voice of those patients. Somebody.

00:39:09 Speaker_06
Angela waited. But before she heard a word from the medical board, she would cross paths with Dr. Fata again. And it would turn out that insurance fraud was just the start.

00:39:21 Speaker_06
Dr. Fata was causing perfectly healthy patients to get terribly ill or even die. Coming up this season on Dr. Death.

00:39:36 Speaker_05
He's a psychopath.

00:39:38 Speaker_06
I mean, what else is there to say?

00:39:40 Speaker_07
He would walk into a doctor's office with a patient, look them in the eye, and lie to them and say, you have cancer. She just looked at my sister and I and said, I'm so sorry, girls, but I'm just going to have to die.

00:39:55 Speaker_11
What do I do? Do I get to the Department of Justice right now? Do I just pull the fire alarm and tell everybody to run for their lives?

00:40:03 Speaker_07
And they came in and showed their badges and said, we're here about Michigan Hematology Oncology, Dr. Fada. And I started crying.

00:40:20 Speaker_06
From Wondery, this is Episode 1 of 6 of Dr. Death Season 2. If you'd like to listen to the rest of Dr. Death Season 2, Dr. Fata, you can find it exclusively on Amazon Music.

00:40:34 Speaker_06
Or if you want to listen ad-free, you can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app. This is the story of hundreds of patients in Michigan, a doctor, and a poisonous secret.

00:40:45 Speaker_06
If you're enjoying this series and you'd like to help us spread the word, tell your friends and family to listen. We'd appreciate the support. I'm your host, Laura Beal. Heather Schroering wrote and reported this story.

00:40:58 Speaker_06
Associate producer is Chris Siegel. Story editor is Casey Minor. Fact-checking by Jacqueline Coletti. Additional production assistance from Daniel Gonzalez. Managing Producer is Latha Pandya. Sound Design by Jeff Schmidt.

00:41:12 Speaker_06
Our Executive Producers are George Lavender, Marshall Louis, and Hernan Lopez for Wondery.