Hundreds of women have sued Chesapeake Regional Medical Center (CRMC) alleging the health facility “enabled” former physician Javaid Perwaiz to perform unnecessary surgeries on them. The 510 plaintiffs are each seeking $10 million.
Javaid Perwaiz is currently serving a 59-year prison sentence for medicaid fraud after he was convicted of performing unnecessary procedures and surgeries, including hysterectomies, on women without their consent.
Chesapeake Regional Healthcare responded to the lawsuit on Tuesday.
“The allegations that form the primary basis for this lawsuit were taken by Dr. Javaid Perwaiz – who has never been an employee of Chesapeake Regional Healthcare (CRH). His actions, for which he is now serving a lengthy prison sentence, occurred without the knowledge of the organization. CRH strives to provide the best care to its patients, including through its medical staff physicians. Unfortunately, privacy laws prohibit us from commenting further on these allegations,” it said in a statement, seeking dismissal of the lawsuit.
“He came off nice and secure made me feel comfortable and then that’s when things changed,” Dracena Holloway, one of the plaintiffs said.
Dracena Holloway began seeing Perwaiz in 2002. She says Perwaiz performed over 10 surgeries on her.
“I can barely walk sometimes I have a lot of abdominal pain I have chronic illnesses. My children have to help me out most of the time,” Holloway said.Holloway also says Perwaiz delivered four of her children, and induced labor prior to 39 weeks without a medical reason.
“I just feel like the hospital needs to be held accountable, the doctor’s already locked up for it, but somebody else needs to be held accountable which is the hospital because they allowed him to practice there.”
The lawsuit states that executives at the hospital enabled Perwaiz to perform unnecessary procedures for nearly a decade despite quote “repeated reports and clear evidence” of Perwaizs’ prior misconduct in his own OBGYN practice.
Perwaiz was granted privileges to operate at the hospital by CRMC and plaintiffs like Holloway, say the hospital ignored red flags in order to cash checks at the expense of her health.“I feel like it will bring justice and accountability, even though no amount of money can undue what’s been done to my body at all because I’m the one that got to look in the mirror, look at the scars, I got to go through the pain. but as long as justice is done it’ll make me feel good,” Holloway said, “Like wow, something has been done about the pain I’ve been going through.”
Perwaiz ran a solo practice in Chesapeake for nearly 40 years before he was indicted for fraud in 2019 after an anonymous tip was sent to investigators. His trial concluded in November of 2020, where he was found guilty on 54 of 63 charges and sentenced to serve the rest of his life in prison.
The lawsuit, which includes allegations dating back to the late 1980s up until his arrest in 2019, also names three senior hospital executives: James Reese Jackson, the current president and CEO, and two of his predecessors, Peter Francis Bastone and Wynn Lawton Dixon Jr.
In January, Chesapeake Regional Medical Center was charged with healthcare fraud, conspiracy to defraud the U.S., and interference with government functions by a federal grand jury. The charges allege that, from 2010 to 2019, the hospital received roughly $18.5 million in reimbursements from healthcare benefit programs for surgical and obstetric procedures that Perwaiz performed at the hospital.