DALLAS Faye Scroggins lies motionless in her hospital bed at the Green Acres nursing home in Emory, Texas, as her two, middle-aged sons pace back and forth in the hallway, despondent over their inability to ease her suffering.
They say she was a vibrant woman, with a lot of happy years ahead of her before Dr. Jack Thomas operated on her hip. Soon after the hip replacement surgery, her body was overtaken by a severe infection, which has since paralyzed most of her body.
\"My life is really dead… laying here 24-hours a day,” Scroggins explains.
Still grappling with the reality of his mother’s deteriorating condition, Jack Scroggins says he wasn’t prepared for what he saw on CBS11’s 10 p.m. newscast May 7.
\"My heart raced, first. My stomach turned. It all made sense,\" he recalls.
The story that elicited his response was a CBS11 investigation detailing the hidden criminal history of Dr. Thomas, as well as the doctor’s knee replacement surgery on former patient Bernie Murrey, which resulted in amputation.
Dr. Thomas has two, felony convictions and was sentenced to state prison in 1991 for Medicare and Medicaid fraud and received 10 years probation for violating the controlled substances act. As a result, the Texas Medical Board revoked his license in 1991, but reinstated it in 1999.
Physicians are required to self-report their criminal convictions to be included in the physicians’ online personal profile on the Board’s website. But for the last three years, Dr. Thomas reported to the Board that he had no criminal convictions, and that is what was posted online for public reference.
Scroggins says if she would have known about Thomas’ criminal record, she would never have allowed him to operate on her.
(By Robert Riggs Reporting)
