Joan Rivers (L) and Melissa Rivers in 2013.
The New York City ambulatory surgical center where Joan Rivers died in 2014 has settled a malpractice suit brought by the late comedian’s daughter, Melissa. Among the charges was that gastroenterologist Dr. Lawrence Cohen took a selfie with Rivers while she was under anesthesia.
Terms of the settlement weren’t released, according to ABC News.
Rivers died in Sept. 4, 2014, a week after suffering a heart attack during a procedure at Yorkville Endoscopy in Manhattan. She went into cardiac arrest during an endoscopy that Cohen, the clinic’s medical director, performed. It took 10 minutes for physicians to realize that her airway was blocked, according to the lawsuit.
The endoscopy reportedly happened after Rivers’ personal otolaryngologist, Dr. Gwen Korovin, performed a biopsy of the celebrity’s vocal cords without the patient’s consent. Korovin, the only surgeon there trained to perform an emergency procedure Rivers subsequently needed, had already left the operating room, ABC News reported.
The suit also claimed that Korovin had not been authorized to be in the OR, but that Cohen allowed her in.
“In accepting this settlement, I am able to put the legal aspects of my mother’s death behind me and ensure that those culpable for her death have accepted responsibility for their actions quickly and without equivocation,” Melissa Rivers told ABC in a statement.
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“Moving forward, my focus will be to ensure that no one ever has to go through what my mother, [son] Cooper and I went through and I will work towards ensuring higher safety standards in outpatient surgical clinics,” Melissa Rivers continued.
In a statement, Rivers family attorneys emphasized the patient-safety aspects of this case:
In keeping with Melissa’s wishes, we will continue to work with the Rivers’ family to ensure that appropriate safeguards and higher safety standards are put into effect in all ambulatory surgery centers to protect the health, safety and well-being of all patients and to prevent such a tragedy from ever happening again.We have agreed to keep the terms of the settlement confidential to make certain that the focus of this horrific incident remains on improved patient care and the legacy of Joan Rivers.
Yorkville Endoscopy lost its right to bill Medicare in 2015. The clinic did not comment to ABC on the settlement.
Photo: Christopher Polk/Getty Images for VH1
