Judge finds that Board of Medicine withheld information from accused doctor

The Iowa Board of Medicine regulates the state's medical profession as part of the Iowa Department of Inspections, Appeals and Licensing. (Photo by Getty Images, board seal courtesy the State of Iowa)

State licensing officials failed to provide all of the necessary information to an Iowa physician accused of incompetence, a judge has ruled.

In 2022, an Iowa-licensed surgeon, Dr. Giovanni Ciuffo, formerly of Sioux City, was accused of unnecessary surgeries and lying to patients. Last year, the Iowa Board of Medicine charged Ciuffo with professional incompetence, engaging in a practice that is harmful or detrimental to the public, and knowingly making misleading or untrue representations in the practice of medicine.

All of the alleged conduct that gave rise to the board’s charges is being withheld from public disclosure pursuant to a 2021 Iowa Supreme Court ruling that requires licensing boards to keep such information confidential until a case is resolved.

In May 2022, the Iowa Capital Dispatch reported that Ciuffo was referenced in a federal civil lawsuit that alleged he had provided substandard care for patients and manipulated patient-outcome data at MercyOne Siouxland Medical Center. Through his attorney, Ciuffo said then that the allegations made against him in that lawsuit were “outrageous and completely false.”

The claims were part of a lawsuit filed by Cynthia Tener, a registered nurse, against her former employer, MercyOne. Tener, who was the Siouxland Medical Center’s director of the cardiovascular service line, alleged she faced retaliation after raising concerns regarding Ciuffo’s conduct and his treatment of patients – an allegation that Mercy denied.

Ciuffo was accused of keeping patients alive via ventilators, heart pumps and feeding tubes for at least 30 days after surgery to improve his ratings in the Society of Thoracic Surgeons’ database – a charge Ciuffo’s attorney said was demonstrably false .

Tener’s lawsuit was dismissed two months after it was filed, with the judge in the case noting the False Claims Act, under which she sued, allows for claims related to fraud, not malpractice.

Recently, Ciuffo sought a continuance in the Board of Medicine proceedings against him, arguing in part that the board had not turned over to him all of the relevant information in the case during the “discovery” phase of the proceedings, in which each side shares information with the other.

When the board refused to reschedule the hearing, Ciuffo took the matter to court.

Recently, Polk County District Court Judge Coleman McAllister found that the board, in denying Ciuffo’s request for a continuance, had given no indication it had even considered Ciuffo’s argument there was good cause for such a continuance.

The judge issued a stay in the proceedings, preventing the board from moving forward with its scheduled hearing at least until it issued a ruling stating that it had considered Ciuffo’s specific arguments for a continuance.

As part of his ruling, McAllister also noted that Ciuffo’s attorney had alleged the board withheld “peer review” documents concerning McAllister’s patient care.

“Importantly, at the hearing held before this court on May 31, 2024, counsel for (the board) did not deny that (Ciuffo) had not received this information,” McAllister stated in his ruling. “Apparently, the omission of this information … was the product of inadvertence or oversight.”

Recently, another Iowa-licensed physician, Hamza Alsayouf of Des Moines, took the Board of Medicine to court alleging it had failed to turn over all of its information on him.

Alsayouf alleges that on Feb. 29, 2024, the board staff sent him an “inquiry about certain criminal allegations which allegedly occurred in a foreign country.” Alsayouf says he has advised the board that he does not know anything about the alleged criminal matters, and that he has asked the board to turn over its investigative file on him “so he may knowledgeably respond” to the inquiry.

According to the lawsuit, the executive director of the Board of Medicine has denied the request for the investigative file, which has prompted Alsayouf to seek judicial review of that decision.

A court hearing on the matter is scheduled for Sept. 19.

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