Florida doctor with a ‘luxury medspa’ lost his license for ‘negligence-incompetence’
Florida’s Board of Medicine suspended the license to practice medicine of West Palm Beach-based Dr. Chaim Colen Friday in a reciprocity move 18 months after the state of Michigan’s Board of Medicine suspended the neurosurgeon’s license.
Michigan’s reason for suspending the neurosurgeon’s license, from a Michigan Licensing and Regulatory Affairs January 2020 disciplinary action report: “Negligence-Incompetence.”
Colen now runs Inspire Palm Beach, a business he and his wife founded that describes itself on its website as a “luxury destination medspa” and describes Colen as a “renowned neurosurgeon.”
In a Wednesday email to the Miami Herald, Colen opined, “The actions of the board are indeed a travesty...” but didn’t get his license reinstated after what was supposed to be only a six-month suspension with a $20,000 fine. Online Michigan records say Colen’s license is “lapsed-suspended” after its expiration date of Jan. 31, 2021.
Florida, where Colen has been licensed since March 12, 2010, suspended Colen’s license “until such time as he demonstrates to the Board that his license is unencumbered and free from any restrictions or conditions in any and all jurisdictions where he is licensed.”
Florida’s Department of Health online public records say Colen’s also licensed for neurosurgery in Montana. But Montana’s online public records say his license there has been “terminated” and was set to expire March 31, 2015. Why it was “terminated” isn’t stated. The disciplinary box on the license page says “there’s no adverse information” about Colen.
Michigan’s final order says Colen didn’t respond in writing to the allegations in the administrative complaint, inaction that the Board of Medicine said “would be treated as an admission of the allegations contained in the complaint...”
The allegations in the Michigan complaint against Colen
All that follows comes from the aforementioned administrative complaint.
▪ Around 1 p.m. on March 6, 2017, an unconscious “B.L.” arrived at the emergency room at Petoskey, Michigan’s McLaren Northern Michigan Hospital via ambulance.
B.L. had been having “garbled speech, numbness in his face and left-sided weakness” along with a history of high blood pressure, alcohol abuse and seizures.
After a CT scan, Colen went to the emergency room, “showed B.L.’s family the results of the CT scan and explained that B.L. had a poor prognosis and was brain dead.”
But, the complaint said, around 6 p.m., the admitting physician’s report said B.L. coughed and gagged and “was spontaneously breathing over the vent.”
Though B.L. died on March 7, the board found Colen “inappropriately determined B.L. was brain dead and prematurely notified B.L.’s family on March 6...”
▪ Two months later, Colen told a patient’s family he was brain dead and reversed himself that night. Still, the first notification happened two days before the patient’s actual death.
▪ Colen did neck surgery in two places on “F.S.” on July 28, 2017. When F.S. was sent home on July 31, Colen noted F.S. said he had “difficulty swallowing.”
That problem brought F.S. back to the emergency room on Aug. 6, 2017. The emergency room physician noted that a CT scan of the neck showed breakdowns at the surgical site that “were highly suspicious for infection.”
When Colen was reached, “he recommended that F.S. be treated wtih Decadron, Benadryl and antacids” and be sent home.
F.S. returned on Aug. 12, 2017 with the same hard time swallowing, but now also with “fever and yellow and green discharge from the surgical incision.” An MRI the next day showed a neck infection and an epidural abscess, which Cedars Sinai says is “an infection that forms in the space between your skull bones and your brain lining.”
Colen was told F.S. would need follow-up surgery. On Aug. 14, 2017, another doctor noted that F.S. was sent to “another neurosurgical facility because [Colen] felt that this case was beyond the scope of his practice.”
▪ In October 2017, Colen did a cervical fusion procedure on patient “L.B.” In response to what Colen documented as “substantial bleeding,” he “tucked a small pledget into the space to stop the bleeding.”
Colen tried to use a fibrin patch to replace the pledget (defined by Webster’s as “a compress or pad...used to absorb discharges”) but couldn’t do so., the complaint said.
“Thus, [Colen] purposefully left the pledget in place after completing the surgery, although a pledget is not intended for implantation.”
Also, in his discharge summary, Colen didn’t have a plan for taking out the pledget.
▪ In February 2018, Colen did neck surgery on patient “B.P.” to deal with multilevel cervical degenerative disk disease. Colen documented that B.P. lost 1 liter of blood during surgery. So, Colen “tucked a cottonoid into the space.”
A rerun of the pledget situation occurred: Colen tried and failed to swap out the cottonoid with Surgicel; he left the cottonoid in place, though it’s not designed to be left in there; and he didn’t write out a plan for removing it.
The hospital revoked Colen’s clinical privileges in August 2018.
This story was originally published September 9, 2021 at 1:31 PM with the headline "Florida doctor with a ‘luxury medspa’ lost his license for ‘negligence-incompetence’ ."
