The Top Doctor at Multnomah County’s Jails Was Hired While Under Investigation by the State Medical Board

The Oregon Medical Board is accusing the new medical director of Multnomah County’s jails of “gross negligence” in his care of two patients while in his previous role as a surgeon at Providence Willamette Falls Medical Center in Oregon City.

The county hired Eleazar Lawson, 50, as medical director of Corrections Health in August. That makes him responsible for the care of the 30,000 inmates who cycle through county jails every year. He is one of the county’s highest-paid employees, earning $336,671 a year.

Lawson was licensed to practice medicine in Oregon in 2019, and the investigation relates to surgeries he performed in 2020 and 2021—before his tenure overseeing the jails.

In a “notice of proposed disciplinary action” filed Nov. 2, the board accuses Lawson of “unprofessional or dishonorable conduct” and “repeated negligence” in the treatment of the two patients.

The board, as is customary when it sends out notices of potential discipline, has proposed fining him $10,000 and revoking his medical license. It hasn’t yet decided whether or how it will ultimately discipline Lawson. He can make his case to an administrative judge prior to the board making a final decision.

But even proposing such discipline is unusual. The Medical Board reviews around 800 complaints a year and fully investigates half. Fewer than 10% result in some sort of discipline. Doctors typically reach settlements with the board before it proposes a punishment. That Lawson hasn’t settled suggests he’s fighting the allegations.

The Nov. 2 filing raises questions not only for Lawson but for the county, which hired him to oversee a division in turmoil while he was still under investigation by the state Medical Board. There’s been an unprecedented series of inmate deaths in county jails—seven so far this year. The health department is overseen by County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson, and has had three directors in the past year (the one who hired Lawson was a deputy promoted in the interim).

County Commissioner Sharon Meieran says she lacks faith the county is properly vetting top health staff. “There’s a pattern of systemic dysfunction,” she tells WW.

The filing is the first public indication of the Medical Board’s investigation of Lawson, which it first opened in March 2022. But many of the underlying allegations were described in a lawsuit filed more than two years ago that resulted in a multimillion-dollar settlement, according to a public disclosure filed with the Medical Board in February.

WW presented questions to Multnomah County on Nov. 17 about when county officials first became aware of the allegations and what it planned to do next. The county said at first it could not quickly answer, then three days later declined to comment. Lawson also declined to speak to WW.

Lawson’s hiring this summer appeared to solve an urgent problem for the county.

As WW has previously reported, the jails are short staffed and the county has struggled to retain employees. This summer, all of the county’s jail physicians resigned, citing various concerns over patient safety (“The Doctor Is Out,” WW, Oct. 31).

The county jails’ previous medical director announced his retirement last year. The county struggled to replace him for nearly a year. As WW has previously reported, the county had to restart the hiring process in January after a promising candidate for the position turned out to lack the necessary qualifications.

The county interviewed two candidates over the summer and selected Lawson. He was, in some ways, a surprising choice. Unlike his predecessor, Michael Seale, who led medical care at Houston’s jail before coming to Portland, Lawson does not have previous corrections experience.

Instead, he was a practicing surgeon for two decades—in the U.S. Army and in California, where he had graduated from the University of California San Francisco medical school, and then in Oregon City where he took a job in 2020 as chief surgeon at Providence Willamette Falls, according to his LinkedIn profile.

The Medical Board’s letter, dated Nov. 2, captures two of Lawson’s lowest moments on that job, describing the findings of its investigation into his treatment of two unnamed patients.

One, a 57-year-old man, died shortly after Lawson conducted an operation to reverse a colostomy, the letter says. The man had severe liver damage due to alcoholism, and his surgery had already been delayed after he showed up to the operating room drunk. Liver damage affects the body’s ability to clot blood, and the damage was so severe the patient should have been evaluated for a transplant, the board noted.

Lawson didn’t conduct standard pre-operative tests and performed the surgery anyway, the board found. The patient bled to death on the operating table.

To make matters worse: Willamette Falls Medical Center had a low supply of platelets, a key ingredient for the cocktail of “blood products” to perform a “balanced transfusion” if a patient hemorrhaged—as this man did.

The board said Lawson’s decision to operate that day despite the risks amounted to “willful indifference to medical standards.” And his failure to adequately prepare for a resulting hemorrhage was “unprofessional conduct” that endangered his patient.

The second patient is Thomas Pope. Although he’s unnamed in the Medical Board letter, he filed a lawsuit against Lawson in 2021 outlining similar circumstances to those described in board records.

According to the board, Lawson made several errors while performing a risky surgery to close a large hernia in the patient’s diaphragm. Lawson initially considered sending him to Providence Portland Medical Center, which had a team more experienced with this surgery, but decided to do it himself because the patient didn’t want to wait, according to the board’s letter.

Lawson placed the patient at the wrong angle when performing the surgery and used surgical mesh incorrectly during the procedure, the board says.

Pope, 66, later said in a legal complaint that he went under the knife four more times to repair internal organs following the initial surgery.

The Medical Board concluded: “Licensee’s repeated but unsuccessful attempts to repair the failures from his first surgery on [the patient], again often outside of his skill and experience level or the experience level of his facility, rather than immediately referring the patient to a very experienced team and facility twenty minutes away, were errors of such magnitude that his willful disregard of medical standards may be inferred.”

Pope was permanently disfigured as a result, he said in a subsequent lawsuit accusing Lawson and the hospital of negligence. Ultimately, the sides settled. Lawson’s insurance paid out $2.25 million this January.

Lawson left Providence the following month, according to LinkedIn. It is not clear why. A Providence spokeswoman declined to explain.

Through his attorney, Pope also declined to comment. He’d signed a confidentiality agreement as part of the settlement.

Lawson is currently facing two other ongoing lawsuits alleging medical negligence filed last year.

Although Lawson was unwilling to speak to WW for this story, he has previously been critical of WW’s coverage of problems in the jails, calling it “unbalanced” in an email to staff earlier this month.

After Lawson did not respond to a voicemail message left on Friday, a WW reporter knocked on the door of his Lake Oswego home the following morning.

Lawson was initially friendly. But upon recognizing the reporter, he threatened to call the police.