Doctor accused of ‘fraudulent concealment’ can’t be held liable

In April, the Iowa Supreme Court dismissed a knotty claim against a local doctor and hospital accused of concealing a woman’s renal cancer, according to a story in the Iowa Capital Dispatch, among other news outlets.

In 2004, Linda Berry visited Mercy Medical Center in Cedar Rapids for an unspecified ailment. At the hospital, Ms. Berry underwent a CT scan, which revealed a benign cyst on her right kidney. According to the suit later filed by her family, she was not informed about the growth during this visit — nor during four successive visits to the same hospital over the next decade.

The first of these four visits occurred in 2006, when Ms. Berry was again seen at Mercy, this time for a urinary tract infection. Despite undergoing a second renal scan, Ms. Berry was not informed of the mass on her right kidney.

Three years later, in October 2009, she arrived with her daughter at the Mercy emergency department (ED) complaining of abdominal pain. She was examined by Paul Grossmann, MD, a general surgeon. Ms. Berry underwent an abdominal scan that showed her renal abnormality. Dr. Grossmann diagnosed her as having constipation and released her from the ED. According to the family, he made no mention of the mass on her right kidney.

En route home, however, Ms. Berry and her daughter received a call from a resident under Dr. Grossmann’s supervision. Returning to the hospital, Ms. Berry learned that her constipation was actually colitis. She was prescribed an antibiotic and was again released from the ED. Her post-release instructions made no mention of the now larger mass on her kidney.

Two days later, still complaining of abdominal pain, Ms. Berry returned to the Mercy ED. Examined by another ED doctor, she underwent a fourth CT scan, which also showed the kidney mass. A radiology report urged Dr. Grossmann, her previous physician, to pursue the matter in order to rule out renal cancer. Dr. Grossmann followed up with Berry’s primary care doctor. In doing so, though, he mentioned only the patient’s ongoing colitis, not her kidney mass, according to the plaintiffs’ claim.

In 2016, following a fall, Ms. Berry returned yet again to the Mercy ED, this time with a broken arm. During her treatment, she underwent a fifth CT scan, which revealed the same kidney mass. This time, though, a discharge nurse mentioned the abnormality to Ms. Berry — allegedly the first time in more than a decade that a medical professional had alerted her to the potential problem.

The alert may have been too late, however. Ms. Berry was diagnosed shortly thereafter with metastatic renal cell carcinoma. She died on May 22, 2019.