Charity Surgery Day to help cash-strapped patients

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Uninsured or out of work but in need of surgery? You may be in luck.

Dr. Kevin Petersen, the man behind No Insurance Surgery, and other surgeons plan to offer a day of free surgeries Nov. 15 through Helping Hands Surgical Care. They’re looking for applicants in need of their services.

One of those who will benefit is Lisa Brown, who lives near the Stratosphere with her boyfriend. When she was 8, her bronchitis caused her to cough extra hard, resulting in a hernia.

"I learned to live with it," she said.

Five years ago, she was lifting a mattress and incurred another one. It turned out to be an umbilical hernia, far tougher to live with.

"Every time I eat, it’s painful," she said. "It swells."

Worse, the swelling puts pressure on her heart and exacerbates an existing heart problem. She went to see Petersen months ago, but selling Avon and cleaning houses didn’t leave much in her budget for surgery. Hers was one of the cases that spurred Petersen to set up the foundation.

In October, he had his nurse call Brown and offer to do the surgery at no cost.

"I couldn’t believe it," Brown said of the out-of-the-blue call. "I mean, how often do you hear something like that?"

The free surgery day will involve a number of surgeons, including Dr. Allan Stahl, cardiology; Dr. Michael Verni, urology; Dr. Cameron Earl, plastic surgery; Dr. Jeannie Khavkin, otolaryngology and facial plastic surgery; Dr. Yevgeniy Khavkin, spine surgery; Dr. Ronette Cyka, gynecology, and Dr. George McMickle, ophthalmology and eye surgery.

Outpatient surgeries will be performed. For Stahl, that means pacemaker generator replacement surgery. He said the foundation is looking to the manufacturers to donate devices that run about $5,000 each. If the outpatient surgery were done at a hospital, he estimated the bill would run about $15,000.

Khavkin’s patients have spinal issues such as tumors and scoliosis or are in need of disk replacements. For the past 10 years, he has been involved with two international organizations where doctors, nurses and surgeons donate their skills. It has taken him to South American countries, Ukraine and his homeland, Russia.

"But it’s uncommon to hear of someone (doing) charity work here in the U.S.," he said.

Applicants will be screened according to need and factors such as how advanced their condition is, the overall health of the person and the prognosis expected. Drug use or other bad habits will be taken into consideration.

"We don’t want to operate on someone with bad lungs, and a history of smoking would play into that," Stahl said.

The Medical District Surgery Center, 2020 Goldring Ave., Suite 300, an outpatient facility, is donating its three surgical suites and support staff.

The inspiration for the free surgery day came from Doctors Without Borders, which goes to Third World countries. Petersen said the need is just as great in the United States for "people who’ve had their lives turned upside down in this economic tsunami."

He sees patients daily who are unable to pay. So do the other surgeons signed on for the effort.

"We want people who, if they went to a hospital to have these operations, it would bankrupt them," Stahl said. "We don’t want more people to lose their homes."

Petersen said his intent in establishing the nonprofit Helping Hands Surgical Care is to hold such free surgery days three or four times a year.

The biggest hurdle to seeing the foundation come to fruition was dealing with the Internal Revenue Service and all the paperwork required.

"It really takes a full-time person to do it," he said. "You fill out one form, send it in and get 10 more back."

Petersen has taken heat for his no-insurance, cash basis-only practice. One local surgeon, William Maranon, wrote a letter to the editor of View in which he called Petersen a "shrewd business man making a great profit margin."

"His calculation left out half of the costs I actually have … it was a very naive summation of how much I’m making," Petersen said.

Applications for Charity Surgery Day can be found at helpinghandssurgical care.com.

Contact Summerlin/Summerlin South View reporter Jan Hogan at jhogan@viewnews.com or 387-2949.