John Jefferson
Raynaldo Ortiz (U.S. Attorney’s Office).
A Texas anesthesiologist will spend the rest of his life in prison for injecting drugs into patients’ IV bags, resulting in at least one death and causing multiple patient cardiac emergencies.
Raynaldo Ortiz Jr., 61, was sentenced on Wednesday to 190 years in federal prison, the maximum punishment, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced in a press release.
Northern District of Texas Chief Judge David C. Godbey, a George W. Bush appointee, called his actions “tantamount to attempted murder,” DOJ spokesperson Dooley posted on X.
Dr. Raynaldo Ortiz, the disgraced anesthesiologist who injected heart-stopping drugs into patient IV bags, was sentenced today to 2,280 months — 190 YEARS — in federal prison.
Chief Judge Godbey called his actions “tantamount to attempted murder.”
More to come…
— Erin Dooley (@erindooley) November 20, 2024
Dooley added that at the hearing, the son of a victim told the court his 10-year-old no longer trusts doctors because “a doctor tried to kill Pops.” The father of another recalled with horror seeing Dr. Ortiz’s “dead fish stare” on surveillance video, Dooley posted.
Ortiz was convicted in April of four counts of tampering with consumer products resulting in serious bodily injury, one count of tampering with a consumer product and five counts of intentional adulteration of a drug.
“Dr. Ortiz cloaked himself in the white coat of a healer, but instead of curing pain, he inflicted it,” U.S. Attorney Leigha Simonton said in a statement when Ortiz was convicted. “He assembled ticking time bombs, then sat in wait as those medical time bombs went off one by one, toxic cocktails flowing into the veins of patients who were often at their most vulnerable, lying unconscious on the operating table. We saw the patients testify. Their pain, their fear and their trauma was palpable in that courtroom.”
His defense attorney, John Nicholson, argued that prosecutors blamed the most convenient person instead of investigating other medical staff handling IV bags, local NBC affiliate KXAS reported.
The trauma happened in 2022 at Baylor Scott & White Surgicare North Dallas, where numerous patients suffered cardiac emergencies during routine medical procedures, authorities said.
About a month after the unexplained emergencies started, an anesthesiologist at the facility died while treating herself for dehydration using an IV bag.
Suspicions were raised about tainted IV bags in August of that year after an 18-year-old sinus surgery patient began having high blood pressure, cardiac dysfunction and pulmonary edema symptoms and had to be rushed to the intensive care unit in critical condition, prosecutors said.
A test of the fluid from the teen’s IV bag found the suspected cause — a drug cocktail of bupivacaine — a nerve-blocking agent, epinephrine — a stimulant, and lidocaine — an anesthetic.
Authorities also found a puncture in the bag and learned Ortiz surreptitiously injected the bags with the drugs, put them into a warming bin, and waited for them to be used in his colleagues’ surgeries. Prosecutors said surveillance video showed him repeatedly retrieving IV bags from the warming bin and replacing them just before they were carried into operating rooms where patients experienced complications. The video also showed him mixing vials of medication and watching as emergency responders wheeled victims out, officials said.
Doctors testified at trial about the confusion they felt when their patients’ blood pressures skyrocketed after new IV bags were hung. Patients remembered waking up intubated, confused, in pain and fearing for their lives in intensive care units.
Prosecutors alleged Ortiz was disgruntled over disciplinary problems he had been facing, including possibly losing his medical license for an alleged medical mistake in one of his surgeries. Citing records from the Texas Medical Board, Law&Crime reported Ortiz had also been arrested on allegations that he abused women and shot a pet dog.
He also owed millions of dollars to the IRS, KXAS reported.
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