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A doctor reviewing the records calls Alfred Bonati's practice "a systematic abuse of patients.''
By COLLINS CONNER
© St. Petersburg Times, published December 6, 2001
Months after it seemed his troubles were over, orthopedic surgeon Alfred Bonati was hit with a 63-count state complaint that he had improperly tested, treated or billed 14 patients from 1991 to 1994.
The 127-page document paints a chilling picture of misdiagnoses, operations on the wrong side of the spine, inaccurate records, serial surgeries and financial exploitation. The complaint reiterates many allegations levied in 1996 and 1998, but dropped last January.
Officials from the Florida Board of Medicine said then that they dismissed the charges because they found new information to pursue. The new complaint "greatly expands" the original allegations against Bonati, said Bill Parizek, spokesman for the Department of Health.
"We felt like everything in there is very compelling," Parizek said.
While the complaint has more detail, it boils down to the same allegations that the board made before, said Bonati's attorney Cynthia Tunnicliff. "There's nothing different about it," she said, adding that there is "no merit to the allegations."
Moreover, she said, the state waited too long to resurrect the charges from last year: The 2001 Legislature approved a six-year time limit on filing such complaints. These allegations are eight to 10 years old.
Parizek said the medical board's probable cause panel beat the time limit by a month. Its complaint was filed in June; the law took effect in July, said Parizek.
This is the seventh state action against Bonati in a dozen years, none of which has resulted in more than a reprimand.
Yet the members of the medical board describe Bonati in the harshest of terms.
When reviewing the most recent allegations with other members of the state's probable cause panel, Dr. Faud Ashkar characterized Bonati's practice as "a systematic abuse of patients through (the) exercise of influence (and) exploitation."
"I don't think anybody practices orthopedics . . . even close to the way he does it," Ashkar told the board's probable cause panel earlier this year. "I've never heard of anything like it."
The case will be tried before an administrative judge in April 2002.
Bonati describes himself as a pioneer who uses lasers and his own patented arthroscopic tools to perform a less invasive method of back surgery than that used by most doctors.
Over the past 20 years, Bonati has used those techniques to treat thousands of patients at the Gulf Coast Orthopedic Center he founded in Hudson, on the campus of the Bonati Institute.