Alberta Patients’ Lives at Risk Due to Vendetta, Claims Doctor

An internationally recognized Edmonton cancer surgeon is alleging he now has 10 times more patients on his surgical wait-list than his colleagues after his operating room hours were slashed in retaliation for a whistleblower complaint he filed against an Alberta Health Services executive.

The lawsuit alleges the surgeon’s patients are being harmed, to the point of being at “increased risk of death,” by delays in consultation, diagnosis and surgery.

He further alleges the AHS executive distributed two anonymous complaints against him, despite knowing they were false and defamatory.

These allegations are contained in a lawsuit recently filed by Dr. Hadi Seikaly, a head and neck cancer surgeon, against Dr. Daniel O’Connell. Seikaly is suing O’Connell personally and has not included AHS in the lawsuit.

This lawsuit is part of a running dispute that began after O’Connell replaced Seikaly as the head of Edmonton’s ear, nose and throat or otolaryngology division for AHS and the associated academic program at the University of Alberta.

Seikaly was the AHS otolaryngology head from 2006 to 2021, during which time the section grew from 14 to 27 surgeons. O’Connell replaced Seikaly on an interim basis in January 2022.

On Nov. 21, 2022, Seikaly and four other surgeons filed a whistleblower complaint against O’Connell. They alleged he used his interim position to benefit a private cancer care clinic, of which he was a five per cent owner.

The whistleblower complaint also detailed the retraction of a job offer to a highly trained young surgeon — Dr. Daniel O’Brien — who eventually left Edmonton for the United States and launched his own lawsuit against AHS in August.

None of the allegations contained in either of the lawsuits have been proven in court and no statement of defence has been filed for either lawsuit.

While the AHS was investigating the whistleblower complaint, it permanently appointed O’Connell to the head position in early December 2023.

In January 2024, the clinic in which O’Connell is a part owner issued a cease-and-desist letter to Seikaly and his four colleagues and threatened to sue them.

In February 2024, O’Connell fired one of the whistleblowers, Dr. Jeffrey Harris, from his job as the senior ENT administrator for the University of Alberta Hospital, a position he had held for 16 years.

In April 2024, AHS dismissed the whistleblower complaint as unfounded without providing any explanation of how it came to that conclusion.

Allegations of retaliation

The Seikaly lawsuit alleges O’Connell “has retaliated by taking actions to harm Dr. Seikaly, including harming Dr. Seikaly’s reputation, and standing in the community, reducing his ability to earn income, and adversely affecting his employment.”

O’Connell has been responsible for allocating operating room time for Edmonton ENT surgeons since he assumed the permanent position in December 2023, the lawsuit states.

Seikaly is recognized as a world leader in highly complex head and neck cancer resection and reconstruction surgery. He literally surgically takes apart a patient’s head or neck, removes the cancer and then reassembles it. Most of those surgeries can be performed only at the University of Alberta Hospital.

The lawsuit claims that since January 2024, Seikaly’s operating room time at the U of A for major head and neck surgery has been reduced by as much as 33 per cent, and both head and neck surgery and overall surgeries were reduced by as much as 67 per cent.

Surgeries are scheduled three months in advance, and draft schedules are normally circulated to the surgeons for input. But beginning in January 2024, 35 per cent of Seikaly’s scheduled surgeries were changed without prior notice directly by O’Connell or at his direction, the lawsuit alleges.

“Of the seven surgeons sharing Operating Theatre allocations, only Dr. Seikaly experienced significant reductions and substantial changes to his allocations,” the lawsuit states.

“Due to the reductions and changes to Dr. Seikaly’s Operating Theatre allocations, he currently has over 10 times more patients waiting for surgery than the average for surgeons within the Otolaryngology Clinical Section that were not parties” to the whistleblower complaint.

“Approximately 20 per cent of his patients have waited three to five times longer than the target established by the Otolaryngology Clinical Section, which is more than 15 times the average for surgeons that were not parties” to the whistleblower complaint.

The reduction of operating time is harming Seikaly’s patients by causing delays in consultation, diagnosis and treatment, the lawsuit alleges. Longer surgery wait times are allowing cancers to grow or metastasize and there is an increased risk of death.

False anonymous complaints alleged

When Seikaly was divisional head at the University of Alberta, he asked Dr. Jeffrey Harris to create a fellowship “for recruiting, training, and educating surgeons seeking focused and specialized training in advanced Head and Neck surgical oncology and reconstruction.”

In 2008, Harris obtained accreditation for the fellowship from the American Head and Neck Society. The fellowship operated through a foundation, which was a registered charity that recruited candidates and was responsible for administering the fellowship.

Seikaly, Harris and O’Connell all variously served together or separately as a director or program director of the fellowship program between 2006 and April 2024.

On Jan. 10, 2024, the lawsuit states, someone filed an anonymous complaint with the U of A’s board of governors. The anonymous complainant alleged they were required to pay 35 per cent of their billings to the “head and neck foundation,” which the complainant believed was controlled by Seikaly and Harris.

O’Connell knew Seikaly and Harris did not control the foundation. He also knew no fellow is required to make any payments to the foundation. Despite that, the lawsuit alleges, O’Connell “forwarded its full contents to administrative and academic staff at the University of Alberta.”

A second anonymous complaint to the board of governors on April 3, 2024, also alleged the complainant was required to pay 35 per cent of their billings to the foundation controlled by Seikaly and Harris.

On April 30, 2024, O’Connell fired Seikaly as the program’s director despite knowing that the two complaints “contained false, misleading and inaccurate information,” says the lawsuit.

In O’Connell’s termination notice to Seikaly, he stated that the University of Alberta Office of Postgraduate Medical Education and the Advanced Training Council of the American Head and Neck Society, both of which are involved in the accreditation of the fellowship, reviewed and supported the termination.

Except, according to the lawsuit, neither had supported O’Connell’s termination of Seikaly.

On the same day O’Connell fired Seikaly as program director, he told a senior executive with the American Head and Neck Society that he had changed the program director because of “multiple anonymous professionalism complaints” against Seikaly and that he wanted to “clear the name of the fellowship.”

The lawsuit states O’Connell failed to advise anyone that the anonymous complaints were “false, inaccurate and misleading.”

Seikaly is seeking $500,000 a year, as of Jan. 1, 2024, for lost income and general damages of $500,000 for loss of reputation and other unspecified amounts for punitive and aggravated damages.

He is also asking the court to impose a broad injunction on O’Connell, including halting: the reduction in his operating room time; changes to his working conditions; any further derogatory remarks against him; or any further reprisals.

If you have any information for this story, or information for another story, please contact Charles Rusnell in confidence via email.