The Medical Board of California has withdrawn an accusation against a Fountain Valley resident and prominent heart surgeon in Long Beach.
The board’s staff had been investigating Dr. Daniel Miguel Bethencourt for possible disciplinary action because of a 2013 procedure in which a patient nearly lost his leg.
Specifically, investigators were looking into whether there had been a delay in a follow-up exam of the patient and a failure to provide timely and detailed information in post-operative records, according to state documents.
The fear was that the result was a lapse in care that required a complicated follow-up surgery to restore blood flow to the right leg of the patient, who is identified only as 52-year-old male P.T.
The patient filed a civil lawsuit for malpractice in 2014 that was later settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.
The medical board’s accusation was withdrawn on May 4.
Bethencourt has been affiliated with Long Beach Memorial Medical Center since 1998.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.