So, today the LA Times has a story about alleged recurrent fraudulent hospitalization at City of Angels Hospital. There are two doctors listed in that story as being linked to alleged fraudulent hospitalization: Dr. Rudra Sabaratnam, and Dr. Frederick H. Rundall. There is one Dr. Sabaratnam listed on the California medical board web site; that Dr. Sabaratnam went to medical school in Ceylon. I couldn't find out more about Dr. Sabaratnam.

As for Dr. Frederick H. Rundall: he graduated from the University of California, Irvine. One of my experiences during my University of California, Irvine internship is, I believe, relevant to the question of where Dr. Rundall may have learned about the propriety of hospitalizing people who may not actually need hospitalization.

There was a related story about fraudulent hospitalizations at other hospitals in the LA Times last week: 3 Southern California hospitals accused of using homeless for fraud. The only person, other than Drs. Sabaratnam and Rundall identified as a physician in that story, and about whom I could find out anything with a quick web search, was Dr. Kenneth Thaler. Dr. Thaler has also been linked to alleged fraudulent hospitalization. Based on a web search, Dr. Thaler apparently did his residency at the Harbor UCLA Medical Center.

There it is again: the University of California (UCLA is the University of California branch of Los Angeles). Based on what I know about UCLA (see previous posts), I believe that it's clear that Dr. Thaler may have learned poor medical ethics from the Harbor UCLA medical center.

Just another pair of data points.