A doctor was accused of 'touching his nose a lot.' It was a nightmare that took 3.5 years to settle.
It was the worst nightmare for any doctor — let alone a resident just a couple of years out of med school.
After a routine appointment with two children at Baptist Health Medical Group in Madisonville, Kentucky, the children’s mother reported that Dr. John M. Farmer was impaired. Her evidence that day — Nov. 4, 2019 — was that Farmer was “touching his nose a lot.”
An attending physician, Dr. Kenneth Hargrove, who also saw the patients insisted that Farmer was not impaired. “He is twitchy, but that is Dr. Farmer,” Hargrove said.
But so began a 3.5-year nightmare for Farmer, who was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky.
According to the "Fitness for Duty Policy of Baptist Health Deaconess," an employee suspected of being under the influence is supposed to be escorted to “Employee Health” or the emergency room for alcohol and drug testing.
But according to a lawsuit Farmer filed in October 2020 against the hospital and medical group, the director of the residency program, Dr. Diane Nims, didn’t tell Farmer about the allegation until the next day.
Then, she again failed to bring him for testing, which he said later could have shown the claim was baseless.
Nims, despite Hargrove’s attestation that Farmer wasn't impaired, passed on the complaint to the hospital’s human resources director, who reported it to Dr. Wayne Lipson, the chief medical officer.
Before asking Farmer to undergo testing to confirm he was actually impaired, Lipson, Nims and another doctor told him he would have to report to the Kentucky Physicians Health Foundation for evaluation and possible treatment, according to the lawsuit.
Farmer, who insisted he had never worked impaired at the hospital that day or on any other, asked Nims if he could undergo a urine drug screen, but she told him it had to be done at the foundation in Louisville.
Nims and Lipson ordered him to drive there, about three hours away, and Baptist Health Madisonville put him on a leave of absence, pending the foundation’s evaluation.
He finally got a drug sceen, but the foundation’s medical director, Dr. Greg Jones, said he needed to go elsewhere for a 96-hour evaluation and couldn’t practice medicine until he got it, the suit says.
Farmer said Jones assured him the Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure would not take action against him or otherwise be involved.
But on Nov. 22, 2019, Lipson reported the anonymous complaint to the licensure board, and it initiated an investigation. The board also required Farmer to sign an agreed order barring him from practicing medicine again until approved by the board. The Kentucky board reported the order to the National Practitioner's Data Bank for permanent entry on his record, the lawsuit says.
In mid-November 2019, an investigator for the Kentucky licensure board asked Farmer to identify employees who worked with him on the day in question, including doctors and nurses. According to the lawsuit filed in Jefferson Circuit Court in Louisville, where Baptist Health Kentucky is headquartered, Lipson would not let Farmer identify any of them. The defendants denied that allegation.
Farmer got his medical license reinstated, but only after he swore to abstain from alcohol and mood-altering drugs for five years and underwent an evaluation at Metro Area Recovery Residences in Atlanta.
He finished his residence Sept. 1, 2020, two months behind his classmates because of his suspension, which his lawsuit described as a “red flag” for future employers.
Farmer eventually landed a job practicing family medicine in Johnson City, Tennessee.
On May 2, after a six-day trial before Jefferson Circuit Judge Susan Schultz Gibson, a jury unanimously awarded him $3.7 million in damages.
That included $3.5 million for humiliation, emotional distress and mental anguish, and $236,044 for lost wages and out-of-pocket expenses. The jury awarded him every penny he asked for at trial, his lawyers said.
Kit Fullenlove, a spokesperson for Baptist Health, said, “We have great respect for the judicial process, however we strongly disagree with the allegations made against Baptist Health in this case, and are greatly disappointed in the jury’s verdict. We are evaluating our post-verdict options, as we believe the facts as they occurred do not support the verdict."
Farmer, in a statement issued by his lawyers Kathleen DeLaney of Indianapolis and Marvin Coan of Louisville, said he felt vindicated by the verdict.
“It’s been a very difficult 3.5 years, and it is my hope this finally puts this matter to rest," he said.