About 80 malpractice claims at NM hospital settled for $33M

About 80 malpractice claims that forced an Alamogordo hospital to seek bankruptcy court protection last summer have been settled for more than $33 million. The Albuquerque Journal reports that that settlement lets the Gerald Champion Regional Medical Center, the largest hospital in Otero County, to emerge from bankruptcy protection. Dr. Christian Schlicht, an anesthesiologist and pain management specialist, is accused of using fraudulent credentials to operate on patients even though he wasn't a surgeon and injected the cement into patients' spines in a procedure that turned out to be neither safe nor effective.