Prosecutors to involve grand jury in hepatitis C outbreak investigation

County prosecutors plan to take the hepatitis outbreak case before a grand jury in the "near future" to consider potential charges, District Attorney David Roger said Wednesday.

Roger wouldn't identify possible targets of the grand jury, but Dr. Dipak Desai, who ran the clinics where as many as 115 people contracted hepatitis C because of unsafe injection practices, had been at the center of the Las Vegas police investigation.

Police also suggested charges for at least four other medical workers from the clinics.

Prosecutors had not finalized the charges they will seek, but Roger said they could include patient neglect and insurance fraud. Also, prosecutors had yet to send official notices to suspects that they will be targets of the grand jury.

Roger said he chose a grand jury to accelerate the process of having a large number of witnesses testify. If his office were to go a different route, the time needed to question witnesses and allow cross examination by defense lawyers at a preliminary hearing in Las Vegas Justice Court would make scheduling difficult, he said.

State and federal investigations were ongoing into possible insurance billing fraud at the clinics.

Desai's lawyer, Richard Wright, was out of town Wednesday and unavailable for comment, his office said.

Desai came under scrutiny in February 2008 after the Southern Nevada Health District linked several cases of hepatitis C to the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada, 700 Shadow Lane, where he was majority owner.

Officials notified 40,000 former clinic patients about possible exposure to blood-borne diseases because of unsafe injection practices. More notifications followed to patients of a sister clinic, Desert Shadow Endoscopy Center.

Investigators blamed the outbreak on nurse anesthetists reusing single-dose medicine vials among patients.

Clinic staff told health investigators they were ordered by administrators, principally Desai, to reuse supplies and medications to save money, according to a Las Vegas letter suspending the Shadow Lane clinic's business license.

Health investigators since have linked a total of nine hepatitis C cases to Desai's clinics and said another 106 cases were "possibly related."

The police investigation ended late last year. Hundreds of former patients have sued Desai, his clinics and the manufacturers of the anesthetic, propofol, that was used during their colonoscopies.

Lawyer Will Kemp, who will try the first civil case by a former clinic patient in April, said the criminal case shouldn't interfere with his trial because Desai is not a defendant in the case.

Desai is a defendant in most of the other cases. The timing of those trials should also avoid interference from any criminal proceedings, but Kemp predicted Desai's legal team would put up a fight every step of the way.

"Whatever can be done will be done because he's got Rich Wright," he said.

Contact reporter Brian Haynes at bhaynes@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0281.