25-04-2025
Judge dismisses transplant doctor's suit against Baystate
SPRINGFIELD — A federal judge last week dismissed a suit by a doctor who says Baystate Health's report of him as 'an immediate threat to the public' in a national data bank has made it impossible for him to work elsewhere as a transplant surgeon.
That assessment to the National Practitioner Data Bank was included in court papers field over the past year with the federal court in Springfield.
Dr. Bejon Maneckshana, who lives in Connecticut, is not provided the right of legal action under the federal Health Care Quality Improvement Act, the law that established the National Practitioner Data Bank, ruled U.S. District Judge Mark G. Mastroianni on April 16. Mastroianni also ruled that Maneckshana failed to allege a possible defamation claim under Massachusetts law.
Maneckshana sued in 2024.
Maneckshana is a certified organ transplant surgeon and board-certified general surgeon, licensed to practice medicine in Massachusetts. He obtained his medical degree in 2003 and in July 2020, he started working for Kidney Care and Transplant Services of New England in Springfield, a private nephrology group.
According to the suit, he was called in during 2022 to meet with the chair of Baystate Medical Center's Department of Surgery, Dr. Nicolas Jabbour, and the chief of transplant, Dr. Kenneth McPartland, where he was informed an outside surgeon would be brought in to observe his next procedure because a prior transplant performed by Maneckshana left a patient with a nicked kidney artery, according to court papers.
In Maneckshana's suit, his lawyers said the nick left the patient unharmed and caused no harm to the viability of the kidney.
Less than two weeks later, on Oct. 4, 2022, Maneckshana said he was asked to meet with Jabbour and the chief medical officer, Dr. Doug Salvador, after a patient's death.
Baystate sent nine cases of Maneckshana's outside the organization for peer review and six of those cases were deemed to have met the proper standard of care. Three did not meet that standard.
But Maneckshana's lawyers argue that in one of those cases, reviewers said the outcome is due to all the doctors involved and the other two cases were a procedure with known complications.
Maneckshana said he agreed to sign a voluntary agreement not to exercise his clinical privileges rather than face suspension.
The courts, Mastroianni ruled, give medical reviewers protection from suits.
But when he tried to get a new transplant job in California, the database prevented him from getting hired, according to Maneckshana's lawsuit.
His attorneys did not return an email and a call for comment.
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