Continuing the Pattern in Wyoming

Audible subscribers convente all episodes of Dor. Death, the Cowboy early and ad free Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple podcasts While the people of Wyoming's Big horn Basin were scratching their heads over that strange flyer Whispers were spreading even farther In hospital corridors and conferences, one name kept coming up I would hear from O friends. I might see someone at the meeting and say, oh, you't you hear about John? So why w hear something about John At the time, doctor Larry Chin was a neurosurgery professor thousands of miles away in New York, but he knew the name John Schneider instantly. that done their medical training together He could still remember the first time they met walking over to the intern's dorm And I remember seeing a guy and he was very heavily muscled Sort guy Huge biceps and pecs wearing a tiny white Sleeveveless t shirt that barely conceal his massive muscles But it wasn't just his pecs that made John stand out He clelearly had done really well in medical school He was talented, he was smart He'd let it be known that he was headed for the Air Force after training gun I remember came out when we were residents. and you know what neurosurgeon doesn't fantasize themselves as a fighter pilot, top gun type. just fits the stereotype Even years later, Larry Chin never quite forgot the impression that John Schneider made this guy is really something. So when Larry heard the gossip that his old colleague was being accused of orchestrating a bizarre mail campaign, well, Larry couldn't help but be curious They would tell me some crazy story And then, you know, I'd look it up and there it was Larry could hardly believe it How could the gifted young doctor he remembered, the one with all that promise? How could he have become the man that people were now describing This is the guy that I knew was a good doctor guy ributed a lot people's lives Great education, great training It's a tragedy I'm Leon Nafo What happens when only fans becomes more than just a side hustle Only fantasy is an in depth look at the world's newest professional how the rules of human intimacy are being rewritten onine Listen wherever you get your podcasts, or binge all episodes of Only Fantasy, A free, onlyly on Audible I'm Raza Jeoffrey, and in the new season of The Spy Who, we go back in time to meet Benedict Arnold, the spy who betrayed the American Revolution As America fights for freedom from Britain Arnold emerges as one of the rebel's greatest generals But when his loyalty is pushed to the limit, he turns spy vises a plot to shutatter the rebellion and make George Washington a prisoner Follow the Sy who now, wherever you listen to podcasts You can also listen to the full season of the spy who betrayed the American Revolution early and ad free on Audibleible rom Audible Originals, I'm Laura Beal and this is Dr. Death, seeason five The cowboy This is episode two shoot from the hip with John Schneider didn't grow up out on the wide plains of Wyoming In fact, he was raised in the suburbs outside of Los Angeles Born in nineteen sixty one, he went to school in Ventura County H High school yearbook lists him in the school band He played Trombone Once he got to LA County, his colleagues at the hospital quickly noticed traits that would influence his career in the years to come Things that, depending on the context, could make him brilliant or Troubing For the young doctors in training County must have been a wake up call The facility is a shitole Mike Levy was a year above John. They don't clean the walls, they just paint the walls So if you're taking a chest tube out get blood all over the wall, somebody they're painting the next day Somebody was always painting, but the volume is beyond comprehension In the early nineties, LA was in the middle of one of the worst homicide epidemics in the city's history. You save a lot of lives. I personally used to probably take a bullet out of somebody's head every other night Gang members brought their wounded to county, and sometimes they thanked their doctors in unusual ways. I was given a blue hat and told I would be safe in a cryptpss neighborhood not that I would ever seeee if that actually worked or not And amid all the chaos, Schneider thrived This was his home turf He loved it clearly and Like a duck to water. He stood out among the medical staff on the wards. He was this kind of cocky neurosurgery resident who wear cowboy boots and you know scrubs that showed off his muscles and knew a lot. and more than looks He was good with his patience We had so many patients that didn't speak English He knew Spanish to a patient and understand and they were talking fast and he could respond and knew all the slanging and you know whatever. like he was slick Coe was relentless Doctors found that in practice, County was the only facility that took uninsured patients in the area Each shift meant forty to fifty patients and emergencies on top of that During those long hours, Mike Levy had the opportunity to observe John up close. you spend more time with those people than your wife, your kids anybody You live with them And he was left with no doubt where John Schneyder ranked He was just one of the best. I mean, very easily top ten percent You tell him to do something it gets done. He doesn't ask how where when He just gets it done Ao Mike, Schneider had the personality that allowed him to deal with tough situations He's very intense, very intense K kind of like the fifth grade teacher that scares the shit out of you, you know, just looks right through you always very serious Even his laugh was serious. That intensity didn't switch off when he left the hospital A couple of years into his residency, John announced that he was getting married to his fiance, Michelle A neonatal nurse they had a dance at their wedding. and I think he prepared for that dance for two years Dancing didn't seem to come naturally to Schneider He prepared for it, just like surgery He was putting in extra time, I think than his wife even knew about because he wanted to impress her that he had put the effort in Mike was there for the big day ballroom near Universal Studios. Balloons scattered across the floor, tables along the edges. the guests gathered to watch the happy couple I vividly remember just, you know, wanting to see, was he able to pull it off Being a good surgeon and being sterned doesn't make you a good dancer I think we wanted to get a sense if he could do it or not He watched as John and Michelle stepped out for their walls I think that's what amazed me. haaving been to weddings where people learn how to dance and they kind of pull something off for about thirty seconds, but No, it really looked elegant They really look good. But as the dance went on, Mike noticed something about his friend. This was absolute stiff posture No facial expressions, serious It iss almost like they're in a competition That was John Always intense, always driven. even while dancing But sometimes that intensity could turn into something more worrying On occasion, residents like John would need to leave county to see a patient at University hospital It wasn't far, about a ten minute walk through East LA across a stretch of open ground called Hazard Park He was walking to go see a consult at the University Hospital on was held up at gunpoint Hazard Park was said to be the place where local gang members would initiate new recruits And I don't think he had anything on him because he was in his scrubs and he was going to see a console. probably didn't even have a wallet John somehow managed to get away unharmed and get back to the hospital. But what struck Mike was what came next But I remember he was really upset and he would discuss with us that he really wanted to chase after the guy or resist Mike tried to persuade him that that would not be a good idea If somebody's pointing a gun at you. Do what they tell you do and pray for good luck But I remember he was really upset about that. I think we all would be people respond differently I'd be like, oh, I just got mugg And I would have run the other way. The incident stayed with Mike. When John was crossed He couldn't let it go I think that was the Pide component just to let something like that motivate him and somethinghing so unimportant in the absolute scheme of things There's good and bad to that personality In a clinical setting, that works great Larry Chin saw the same streak in John absolute self belief In Larry's opinion, it tied in with the cowboy persona You'd say shooting from the hip, right? So like he'd make a quick decision and probably more often than not If it were fifty, fifty operate, not operate He would operate You know, like I'm going to take him to surgery. I'm going to save his life And maybe You might say, oh, you know you're shooting from the hip because you're not really contemplating or thinking or ruminating He was certain And right or wrong. I'm doing it And If I'm wrong, I'm probably not going to admit I'm wrong In nineteen ninety four, doctor Schneidder completed his residency and headed to Texas The Air Force had helped pay for his tuition So Schneidder served at Wilford Hall, a military hospital in San Antonio. While he was there, he would become the subject of a story in the national media One evening, a man named Joe Corcoran was on the highway driving into San Antonio All of a sudden somebody was waving people down and pointing to a car They had gone off the road to the right stopped his truck and ran over A man was standing by the driver's side door holding a t shirt to the head of a woman He lifted the shirt as Joe got closer What I saw was her brain. I couldn't figure out where her skull went to Joe had seen head injuries before. He happened to be a nurse Nothing like this. was They sububstantial injury going from her. eye socket back through the left side of her head to behind her ear I'm going, how could this possibly happen? And then I looked towards the interior of the windshield And it was just caaping hole in the windshield. There in the back seat was a rock, the size of a melon It had fallen off the back of a passing construction vehicle and crashed through her windshield And She looked at me and she said, my head really hurts She's actually talking to me She was wearing a blue Air Force uniform with a name tag still attached Ctain Margaret Harring. Just stay where you are Helpss on the way. Okay, you've been hurt. I noticed she was getting greay on me thought this lady's not going to make it Within minutes, a helicopter was rushing Margaret to Wilford Hall Meanwhile, Page went out to the surgeon on call It was John Schneyder He sped through rush hour traffic and arrived in just over ten minutes Schneider later described what happened next As he looked at the scans, he saw jagged pieces of skull had been driven deep into her temporal lobe, and a blood clot was pressing against her brainstemem Her heart was slowing She was minutes from deaath There was no time to scrub in or even make a surgical entry into Margaret's brain He went in through the injury itself. Deep inside He located the blood clot and suctioned it out Margaret's vitals began to stabilize and only then Could he scrub in and begin what he called the most difficult part of the operation Painstakingly, Schneidder plucked out pieces of gravel and more than fifty fragments of bone and spent the next six hours reconstructing her skull. And then came the waiting to learn how much of the damage to her brain was permanent weeks later John Schneyder had a visitor And I walked in and I said, goodood afternoon, Dr. Schnyder Margaret had recovered beyond all expectations. And he goes, and you're damn lucky to be alive, and I'm like, And it's nice to see you too I mean, that was his nature. He was very direct He was just that way. Yeah And I like that about him That summer, Margaret returned to work at the base I went on in my career. I had twenty four happy years in the Air Force continontinued on and did other things. traveled the world. And I did it because of what he did Her story was picked up by readers' digest Time Bill as the world's most widely read magazine. The article described her extraordinary recovery and cast Dr. Schneyder as one of the heroic figures who made it happen Scheidder kept a hold of that article for many years It ends with his words to Margaret Something terrible happened to you that day, he tells her something miraculous happened too By the time Stneidder's service ended, he could have gone anywhere His old friends, Mike and Larry went on to have glittering careers at major hospitals and universities in California and New York Dr. Schneyidder wasn't going to set up shop in a coastal state He was heading to Montana You know, fitest persona It kind of made sense that he would go practice by himself in Montana Ride horses, fairback or riding a motorcycle at hundred and twenty miles an hour. And as a solo cowboy neurosurgeon, you know, you could see that For the first time. Schneider wasn't working inside the structure of the military or medical training In Montana, he'd be blazing his own trail in private practice And gettingetting rich I'm Raza Jffrey, and in the new season of the Spy Who, open the file on Benedict Arnold. y who betrayed the American Revolution America is fighting to free itself from the British Empire And one of its foremost generals is Benedict Ar He's a smugger turned battlefield hero admired for his aggressive tactics But when a war wound H new wife, debts and politics test his loyalty to the Max. Turn spy and devises a plot to shatteratter the revolution and help Britain capture rebel commander in chief, General George Washington And that plot of making him the most infamous traitor in US history. Follow the spy who now Whver you listen to podcasts You can also listen to the full season of the spy who betrayed the American Revolution, Ely and ad free on the Audible It was two thousand three, six years after doctor Schneidder had arrived in Billings, Montana Folks at the clinic where Snyder now worked were throwing a welcome party for a new recruit Everyone in the practice came and kind of had our own room at a little restaurant there Dr. Michael Copeland was the practice's latest hire He'd been living in Kansas City, Missouri when he realized it was time for a change I was alone covering two hospitals essentially twenty fourty seven, which was just not sustainable. So my wife and I realized we're probably going to have to leave here because this isn't going to change anytime soon. So she said, how about mountains So when he got a call about a job in Montana, Dr. Copeland listened He considered it against his other options It was definitely the worst financial offer I'm not financially very savvy never have been so The promise of living in a city with a view of seven mountain ranges was too good to pass up. So that night, at the welcome dinner, dor. Copeland and his wife, Joanne were eager to meet the colleagues they'd be sharing their new life with Across the table sat a handsome muscular man in his forties, with dark hair combed neatly to the side He introduced himself as John Schneidder ery charming. ery engaging. You won't be doing much of the talking, but what he's saying is very interesting. and so it's super easy to like, Oh, well, he's a shark, gotot his stuff together and seems like a nice guy What do you do, Joan asked I'm a neurosurgeon, he told her But I really look at myself more as an entrepreneur Later that night, driving home, doctor Copeland and his wife talked about his new colleagues. Joanne mentioned Schneider's comment about being an entrepreneur. We said, Oh, well, good. It'd be nice to have someone around who knows something about that kind of stuff and doesn't make stupid mistakes In the years to come He'd look back on that night in a very different way was more important than we realized. After the welcome dinner, doror Copeland got to work His practice often dealt in orthopedic surgery the population of billing skews older, so that means A lot of bad backs And as the new guy, it was Dror Copeland's job to deal with the patients who'd had a complication after surgery I got the stuff that the other guys didn't really want to do Day in, day out Copland was in the unglamorous business of wound infections So you have to wash it out and you're dealing with p which is no one's favorite. and those people are usually pretty unhappy because they're getting worse, not better And then there were the cerebrosvinal fluid or CSF leaks if the spinal sac gets a evenven a tiny little hole in it spinal fluid will drain out of that. It'll keep leaking and keep leaking until it gets infected and a spinal fluid leak that gets infected is meningitis they can die from that After three months of scraping out wounds and repairing leaks, doctor Copeland decided to check and make sure he was doing a good job I'm thinking I haven't kept track of what I'm doing you want to be a good performer for them. so that made me review what cases I had done Just to know, like what's my pace As he studied the records, doctor Copeland counted seventy six cases in three months Pretty good But as he went through the files, one detail jumped out at him. That's when I saw a lot of CSF repairs There a lot of wound wash out counted those up and I'm thinking, well forty some of my seventy six cases are Schneider complications that's a That's a high number. That's a really high number If I get a CSF leak in a year, that's That's unusual. and I've done a bunch ofem Th months Dr. Copeland kept going over it in his head doror Schneyder wasn't just a founding partner of the practice. He was one of its biggest sources of income, handling cases across Montana and Wyoming too. And he wasn't shy about it Copeland remembers he once told him he was making more than two million dollars a year Dr. Copeland, meanwhile, was very much the junior colleague Even so, when he saw Dr. Schneyder's physician assistant one day in the hallway, he pulled her aside. I said I don't know how manyases he's doing, but There's a lot of CSF leaks and a lot of wound infections. and she said Yeah, I don't, I think percentage wise it's actually low. He's just so prolific So I thought, okay, okay, just thought it was just a numbers game. He's got hundreds and you don't know that this is an outlier And it's someone you with and you have implicit trust I've been there for like three months and all this stuff is coming in and I feel very unqualified in making any judgment, I'm still figuring out where to park my car Dror Copeland says he's always been cautious. He takes time to consider every option to make sure it's the right thing for his patients. It's what I lay awake at night worrying about And I think that's good. I mean, I think it's good that it's troubling I think you're supposed to struggle So the idea of pointing a finger at a colleague when he didn't have all the information and nobody else seemed to think there was a problem didn't feel right I was really giving him the benefit of every doubt Sing out loud now sounds really bad because You know, I'm an aler more experienced human now and I would have reacted sooner than I did Instead, Copeland told himself to keep his head down, and for a while, that's what he did until one day Schneidder came in looking for him He came down the hall and grabbed me and said, Hey, I'm just so busy these next couple of weeks and I got this guy who needs a anterior cervical fusion Would you mind Seeing it I said, Sure, I'll see right now The patient was suffering from arthritis in his spine. doror Schneidder wanted to operate. But as soon as doctor Copeland examined the man, he started to wonder whether surgery right away was a good idea He was at packet a smoker And the failure rate in the heavy smokers for fusion is significant And so my practice at the time is We need to do smoking cessation. So I said, Come see me in six weeks and we'll get this done Shortly after that, Dror Schneidder asked Dr. Copeland about the patient How did the surgery go And I said, well, I'm just getting him to quit smoking first. and then we'll do that in six weeks or so He says Dr. Schneidder didn't really react So Dr. Copeland got on with his day. But then he began to notice a shift in their relationship Pase stop talking to me First time bacon I match them in this and then after a few weeks, you realize he hasn't said a single word to me not since I didn't operate on that guy that he said needed an operation Sland wouldn't have long to dwell on it Around this time, Dr. Schneider announced that he was leaving the practice had taken a position at the University of Utah For Dr. Copeland, it seemed like the problem had taken care of itself That relief didn't last Soon, Schneider's former patients began to show up in Copeland's clinic And as he reviewed their case notes He started to see a troubling pattern Some of Snyder's patients had undergone a procedure called a spinal fusion, using rods and screws to stabilize the spine. But in case after case, Dr. Copeland says he was finding serious problems with the way the hardware was put in Now if you haven't taken the extra time to really prepare that joint, which is time consuming It doesn't matter how long you have the hardware in, it won't fuse And if it doesn't fuse in that period of time and you're getting in and out of bed and on and off the chair That hardware will loosen because it's in bone. it's not in steel. And so as it loosens it, It hurts It hurts. Dr. Copeland took a look back at Dr. Schneidder's notes to see what he was telling his patients. When particular phrase kept coming up He would say, Oh, you're just having myo fascicial pain. Myofascial pain just means pain. It's not a diagnosis. It's a description of your pain, but people think Oh, it's my fascicial pain, so I guess I'm okay then t Copand, the real cause was clear The hardware had come loose So he would just say, no you're fine. It's just myofascial pain Here's some percasset And at the same time, it seemed to Copeland that Schneider had been working nonstop So he would schedule several what I would consider long cases in a day back to back He doesn't get to get out till they're all done. So he's working suuper fast In Copeland's mind, that schedule explained what he was seeing I think he got sloppy. And in some cases, Copeland would wonder why Schneider had put the patients through surgery at all. One patient arrived in Dror Copeland's office after dor. Schneider had performed a lamineectomy on her, removing part of the bone in the spine Even after surgery, the pain was no better She was pretty upset about that So I looked at her pre op studies. dor. Copeland was expecting to find a narrowing of the spinal canal, called stenosis, that would explain the need for such an invasive surgery So he pulled up her MRI And It was pristine He saw no evidence of narrowing in any of the woman's scans So she didn't need an operation at all. That was shocking, like what? You're cutting open her back and unrooofing it Who would do that That's a human When he ran his own tests, doror Copeland said he found that the woman's issue didn't come from her back at all He was all just in her leg. By looking at our images, you would know if you If you're a junior resident You would know that now that's not a lumbar problem But he did big operation on her anyway We asked Dr. Schneyder about all of this. He told us via his lawyer that doctor Copeland's version of events are motivated by a personal grudge because he refused to make Copeland a partner in his practice He says he received complaints about Copeland's bedside manner, attitude, and unwillingness to take on certain challenging neurosurgical cases Stnyder says that when they worked together, he found Copeland to be spiteful toward him. And that Copeland's accusations appear to be vague and petty because no patient ever brought to light the described accusations against Dr. Schneyder The way doror Schneyder sees it, the Montana medical scene was characterized by intense competition among surgeons Dr. Schneidder believes that his success triggered significant backlash from what he describes as entrenched hospital interests and competing surgeons. This, he says, is the real story of his career Janine Dealing would disagree I have not gotten over it and I know I should forgive as a good Christian, but I can't Schneider operated on Jeanine's husband during this period. And he would never recover. Months before Dr. Copeland arrived in Billings forty seven year old Tom Daling had been playing ice hockey when he slipped, landing hard on his tailbone Dr. Schneidder had performed what should have been a routine operation A microdyschectomy trimming the disc and bone to relieve the pressure on Tom's nerves But within weeks of the surgery Tom's wife, Jeine could see that he was still in agony got to the point where he could not stand up He could not walk He had to Pl to the bathroom Janine would watch Tom as he called Dr. Schneyder's office Dr. Snyder told him the pain. was myofascial And they would say, o, that's just part of backaxy. know, it hurts, it's going to hurt for a long time, but it'll get better Just be patient And I mean, they sit there every time, Tom would call didnidn't get better Janine remembers Tom coming back from one appointment, looking shaken Schneider had told him that there was nothing wrong. He just needed to suck it up Before the surgery, Tom loved to go hiking in the mountains But now his daughters could barely recognize their father It was hard and all of us and the girls We're really upset to see their big, you know, strong dad laying on the floor and unable to move sureure weren't used to that and it was awful Eventually, Janine had enough. So I called And I said, this is ridiculous I got so angry. I said, No, this is not normal This is horrifying and I said, he needs an MRI and he needs to be seen immediately. Dr. Snyder's office finally agreed. When the scan was over, Tom tried to get up and couldn't pushed himself up, he fell from the table The technician helped him dress. Then they went home and waited They didn't know it then, but the MRI had found something important, a serious infection. The image showed it clearly. a massive abscess in Tom's back But when Tom went to visit Dr. Schneyder, that's not what he told him Snneyer told Tom, you did re hererniate it. We'll need to do another microdcctomy. It shouldn't be a big deal And Tom said, okay, just please. I can't stand this pain anymore Within a week, Tom was back on the operating table Afterward, Snyder came out to talk to Janine He was like I canan't believe it. This is so incredible. It's never happened to me before. ve done two thousand of these procedures and I've never seen anything like it Infected There is infection inside his spine dor. Schneidder told Janine that he'd scraped out the infection But it wasn't gone Five weeks later, Tom was back for another operation. Then one afternoon, while he was sitting in his recliner, the wound split open Huss oozed out That was it for Danine. So she says she reached out to other doctors at the practice Even now, she still remembers Dr. Copeland He was much more approachable and caring and sympathetic than Snyder was. So I asked him, could he work on Tom alone without Schneider there to clear out that infection because Schneidder wasn't, you know, able to clear it. By this time, the infection had spread deep into Tom's abdomen A radical surgery was needed It took the head of the practice, along with doctor Copeland and two other surgeons more than six hours to repair the damage They cleared as much bacteria as they could But they had to remove a large chunk of his spine. After the operation, Tom was never the same Unable to move without pain, his weight ballooned to around three hundred pounds His dad was appalled that Tom weighed that much and said that is so unlike him I said, Well, he couldn't do anything bad. He could eat, but he couldn't do anything active. Tom wasn't giving up. He got a hold of his medical records and sent them to a lawyer Tom had a case And there were other changes too Tom and Jeanine's daughter had moved back home after having a baby Tom was now a grandpa It was like the baby gave him something to want to live for, you know, There's this little boy he always wanted a son and I'm sure he had Images of throwing a baseball around in a football with this grandson and Tom wanted his crip in the living room. so he had full access to the baby and could pick him up whenever he wanted and Changes diapers Janine began to imagine a more hopeful future. october twenty first, two thousand six three years after his first surgery Tom and Jeanine's younger daughter walked downstairs to find Tom lying on the recliner, as usual But when she looked closer, she realized something was wrong He was white, you know His face was light His head was to the side and it looked like he fell asleep He was sleeping except for the color of his skin. Janine called nine and eleven The operator tried to talk her through CPR I she' s on a recliner. We cannot I have only my daughter here with me Shease sobbing and I'm asking her to push the recliner down so we can get him flat and I can do CPR. and We couldn't days that followed, she tried to make sense of her loss He was improving He shouldn't have died So I told them I'd want to not have see She had to wait until she got the results from the medical examiner's office to find the answers she'd been looking for they found out. So many blood clots in his legs. from inactivity. The medical examiner found that some of those clots had lodged in Tom's lungs The infection in his spine wasn't listed as a cause of death But Janine believes that's where everything began. And for that, she blames Dr. Schneidder As far as I'm concerned He killed him. He is responsible for Tom's death. Tom could not Move He spent Three years not being able to do anything of that inactivity is what caused his legs to develop blood clots When we asked Dr. Schnyder about Tom, he denied being responsible for the infection or his death His lawyer told us that Dr. Schneider is a stellar physician with a distinguished career who has saved thousands of lives over several decades of practice. The portrayal of doror Snyder as a surgeon who killed a patient is not only unsupported by impartial medical review, but also ignores the complexity and inherent risks of neurosurgical practice dor. Schneidder has consistently denied any negligence Three months after Tom's death, in january two thousand seven, an independent panel met to review the case to decide if Janine's lawsuit was justified They were not asked to make a call on whether Schneidder was responsible for Tom's death or the cause of the infection only to decide whether Schneidder had fallen below the accepted standard of care in his treatment of Tom The result was unanimous He had The panel also found by a majority that Tom had been harmed by Dr. Snyder One panelist noted that Dr. Schnneyder came across as arrogant After months of back and forth, Dr. Schneyidder offered to settle the lawsuit without admitting any wrongdoing He offered Jenine the maximum amount allowed under Montana law which was two hundred fifty thousand dollars. As part of the deal, Janine would have to agree to confidentiality She would need to keep quiet about Tom att least for now. On the advice of her lawyer, Janine took the money It was the closest thing to justice the system could offer The anger We all felt, toward Schneider For what we saw as him having done The negligence that caused town's suffering so much suffering. We were so angry and I'm still angry. mean I have not ve gototten over it and I know I should forgive as a good Christian, but I can't I don't think I ever will doror Michael Copeland, meanwhile, was settling into life without doror Schneidder, who had left billings for a position at the University of Utah Bipland was relieved that his old colleague was now long gone And then one day, a patient came into the ER with a postoperative complication. Spinal fluid leak Who in billings did you see? Copeland asked And they said, no, I had my surgery in Cody Cody was across the state border in Wyoming, nearly a two hour drive away. And I said, No, there's no No one's doing operations there. Yeah, Dr. Schneidder is doing operations. Yeah, yeah, yeah doctor Schneidder was supposed to be in Utah Nobody said anything about him coming to practice in Wyoming Dr. Copeland soon found out what was happening She was going to Cody on weekends. and having a clinic Before long, Copeland wasn't just dealing with Schneider's former patients He was getting new ones And he wasn't the only one Billing's other hospital got in touch The neurosurgeons there work on and streaming at us because They were getting Schneider complications in their ER. and they were mad at us and like we don't have anything to do with that Siplin says that together, the doctors alerted the University of Utah about Schneider's clinic in Wyoming Not long after, Dr. Schneyder left Utah According to him, it was on good terms. His former supervisor wouldn't comment on the circumstances, but told us he does not remember anyone from Montana reaching out In total, Steidder worked in Utah for about a year And then hes set up in Cody permanently You're just looking at the future like Oh gosh Am I never going to be away fromr taking care of John Schneidder complications To dor. Copeland, patients were suffering unnecessarily, and it didn't seem like anything would stop it I've never gotten in trouble for anything A bunch of bad things had happened and he skirted everything. been no real consequence all brought him back to something that Schneidder had once said Back at the welcome dinner. really look at myself more as an entrepreneur Now, it didn't seem like a throwaway comment It's a money based system buying cases are very profitable charging two thousand dollars per screw put in thirty of them bill Dror Copeland came to the opinion that Dror Schneider didn't care if he hurt patients unnecessarily. I don't think they are people to him. I think these are opportunities to operate and If you're operating, you maximize the financial Could you treat another human like that knowing they're going to fail and then dismiss them Complete disregard for your fellow human. Cfiting from that. Years later, Schneidder's old colleague from L.A County, Larry Chin, would learn about the accusations that had built up over Schneidder's career Larry had struggled to make sense of how the promising young surgeon he once knew had ended up this way It's a tragedy for all the patients,'s a tragedy for him for his family You can't imagine the pain that the patients went through. onlyn imagine how much torment de you know, for him as well Even now, he still has a hard time wrapping his head around it This is not the person that I knew or saw And you're trying to figure out how this happened. I wish I could tell you