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UNM Hospital responds to a lawsuit filed against it for alleged mistreatment of children with cancer.
“The UNM Health Sciences Center remains committed to providing the best possible care to its patients throughout the state and it will address the newly filed litigation in the appropriate legal forum,” said Billy Sparks, executive director of communication and marketing for UNMH.
UNMH is seeking to resolve the case and efforts to achieve a resolution have gone through the State Risk Management Division, Sparks said in an emailed statement. He said because the case is still pending, further information about UNM’s efforts are confidential.
The case was filed by Denver attorney Jim Puga of Leventhal, Brown & Puga and Albuquerque attorney Adrian Vega of Will Ferguson & Associates on Oct. 1.
The suit alleges that children who could have survived or been cured of cancer were harmed or died because of UNMH’s substandard care.
The two brought up the suit with regard to an incident involving Bernalillo County resident Rose Quintana. Quintana’s son, David, died at age 19 in 1988 of complications from leukemia after being treated for by the UNMH pediatric cancer program.
Puga and Vega filed the suit in the state District Court in Bernalillo County to seek class-action status for any child treated between 1977 and 1997 “for a medical condition involving any form of childhood cancer.”
“The defendant indicated definitively that more than 100 children were mistreated during the time period, but it could prove to be as many as 1,000 children,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit names the UNM Board of Regents, the UNM Health Sciences Center, the UNM Hospital and the UNM School of Medicine as defendants.
Vega said Puga and he are moving aggressively to work through the legal issues for a speedy resolution.
“We’d like to make sure that something like this never happens again, and we’d like to get some closure for the families,” he said.
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Vega said patients suffered in varying degrees due to inadequate treatment in the UNMH pediatric cancer program.
No status conference has been scheduled yet for the Quintana case, Sparks said.
This is the second case brought against UNMH for improper care of children in the pediatric cancer unit. More than a decade ago, an unrelated class-action complaint against UNMH claimed about 100 children were given inadequate care for acute lymphoblastic leukemia from 1989 to 1996.
A status conference is scheduled for Nov. 6 on the second pediatric litigation, which has been pending for many years.
Further comment from UNMH and UNM HSC about the case was not available because Sparks said such information is confidential.
