PHOENIX — A lawyer for a military veteran opened a medical-negligence trial by saying his client’s now-terminal prostate cancer would have been curable had the Veterans Administration hospital in Phoenix diagnosed it sooner.
Attorneys defending the Veterans Administration countered that a nurse practitioner involved in the case of Steven Harold Cooper complied with the applicable standard of care and the then-40-year-old Cooper was not considered to be at risk from prostate cancer at the time of his first appointment.
“There was no reason to send him to a urologist,” said attorney Elizabeth Sichi, noting that Cooper didn’t have risk factors such as a family history of the disease.
The lawsuit is being heard on the heels of a scandal at Carl T. Hayden VA Medical Center in Phoenix in which whistleblowers revealed that veterans on secret waiting lists faced scheduling delays of up to a year.
However, no direct references to wait-times were made during opening statements at Cooper’s trial Monday (February 27).
Gregory Patton, one of Cooper’s attorneys, said the nurse practitioner found abnormalities in Cooper’s prostate during a December 2011 examination but failed to order more testing and refer him to a urologist.
Instead, Cooper learned 11 months later from a VA doctor that he had stage-IV prostate cancer. Life expectancy for Cooper, now 46, is believed to be five years, his lawyer said.
Patton made one passing reference to a weeks-long wait that his client was told he would face for an appointment after he was given his cancer diagnosis. Cooper instead went to a private doctor the next day for treatment.
