Doctors playing ‘music bingo’ missed that their patient had stopped breathing during routine surgery, suit says
A settled lawsuit alleges two doctors were distracted by playing a game of “music bingo” during a routine eye surgery and failed to notice that their patient had stopped breathing – an oversight that proved fatal.
Bart Writer, 56, died shortly after undergoing cataract surgery at InSight Surgery Center in Lone Tree, Colorado, on February 3, 2023.
The lawsuit, filed by his widow, Chris Writer, claimed that the “the distraction of the music bingo game … contributed to the operating room staff’s failure to monitor Mr. Writer’s vital signs during the procedure” and ultimately led to his death.
“My son is without his best friend. I am without Bart, my guy,” Chris told 9News. “Yeah, it makes me angry. It makes me sad. I’m sad. I’m mad. I’m just disgusted.”
Dr. Carl Stark Johnson, the surgeon, and Dr. Michael Urban, the anesthesiologist, regularly played a music-themed bingo game during operations, the lawsuit claimed. The game involved listening to ’70s and ’80s songs and linking band names to the letters B-I-N-G-O, according to court documents obtained by the news outlet.
Johnson, who has performed over 25,000 cataract surgeries, blamed Urban for silencing critical monitoring alarms without informing the surgical team. He added that he relied on the anesthesiologist to monitor the patient’s condition.
“I know that he wasn’t paying attention to the vital signs and doing his job,” he said in a statement to 9News.
Urban, whose Colorado medical license has since expired, maintains he acted appropriately. Now practicing in Oregon, he said through an attorney that he stands by his care and disputes Johnson’s account of the events.
Both Johnson and Urban admitted during depositions that they had played music bingo during Writer’s surgery.
“We continually listen to the radio and we categorize the songs,” Johnson said, describing how bands like the Bee Gees or Neil Young would be used to mark off bingo letters.
The family learned about the music bingo game from a doctor not present during the procedure.
“And he goes, ‘I’m telling you this because I think that’s a major distraction,’” Chris said. So she hired a team of lawyers to take depositions of the surgeon and the anesthesiologist.
The audible alarms had reportedly been turned off and Writer’s body was draped for surgery so no one noticed his skin turning blue, an indication of oxygen deprivation, the lawsuit claimed.
InSight’s staff noticed his abnormal vital signs 11 minutes into the surgery, according to notes obtained by 9News. But by the time Writer was transferred to Sky Ridge Medical Center, a mile and a half away, it was too late.
An autopsy listed cardiac arrest caused by oxygen deprivation as the cause of death. And investigators concluded that his death was a horrible accident.
Chris said she was initially told there was no reason to remain at the clinic during the short procedure so she was out running an errand when she got a call from the surgeon, asking to meet her in the parking lot.
“He asked if I believed in God,” she recalled. “Then he asked if I’d pray with him – and that’s when I knew something was wrong.”
He then told her that her husband had died.
“We had just talked about what we were gonna do for dinner that night,” she said about her husband. “He just never met anyone that he didn’t like and that didn’t like him, you know, it’s just that’s who he was.”
The lawsuit was settled for an undisclosed amount, 9News reported.
Chris, who would have celebrated her 25th wedding anniversary with her husband on July 15, is still heartbroken and angry.
“They just didn’t pay attention. Maybe they do so many of these surgeries that it just becomes so routine,” she said. “I’m just infuriated.”
