San Diego Doctor Collects $2.5M

A pediatrician has agreed to accept a $2.5 million settlement with a medical group that fired him, allegedly in retaliation for spending too much time and money on his patients.

Dr. Thomas W. Self won a landmark victory earlier this month when a jury awarded him $1.75 million over the firing. The settlement, announced Monday, means the jury award will be set aside and a hearing on punitive damages, scheduled for later this week, will be canceled.

"I am pleased, relieved and vindicated," said the San Diego doctor. "I was swimming upstream against the good-old-boy network. But I wanted to show people the position I have taken for quality of care was right."

Self, 58, is the first physician to win a case under a 1992 California law that prohibits retaliation against physicians for advocating appropriate patient care.

The San Diego Superior Court jury found that Children's Associated Medical Group, the main group of physicians at Children's Hospital in Kearny Mesa, and its president, Dr. Irvin Kaufman, fired Self because he refused to limit care.

Self, who still works as a pediatrician at the hospital, testified during the trial that he was fired from the group in 1995 for ordering too many tests and spending too much time with youngsters.

Lawyers for the medical group say Self was fired over a contractual dispute.

"This is a very unfortunate situation," said Dr. Michael Segall of Children's Associated Medical Group. "We are of the conviction this never had anything to do with managed care."

The settlement did not amount to an admission of wrongdoing, he said.

Children's Associated Medical Group is not a health maintenance organization, but it has contracts with HMOs. More than half of its patients are covered through MediCal, the federally- and state-funded health insurance for the indigent.