A psychiatrist who discharged a suicidal man who went home and shot his former wife before killing himself could face revocation of his medical license, according to state officials.
Dr. Syed Khadri, 61, is accused of releasing Cornell Poole of Country Club Hills before checking medical records that suggested Poole was a threat to himself and others, officials said.
Hours after Poole left the state-run Tinley Park Mental Health Center June 26, 1997, he fulfilled threats he had been making to doctors for a week: He shot his former wife and then turned the gun on himself.
Paula Poole, 41, survived the gunshot wound to her stomach, but Cornell Poole, 45, died of a shot to his head.
A week earlier, Cornell Poole had tried to commit suicide and had been admitted involuntarily to the Tinley Park center.
Khadri’s attorney, Daniel Cray, said his client’s “actions are not responsible for the loss of life.”
Khadri, who is practicing in Willowbrook and Joliet while fighting his discharge from the institution, had been covering for Poole’s regular doctor, who was taking time off, according to court documents.
“In the patient records, which Khadri never read . . . various doctors were expressing concern about Mr. Poole’s health,” said John Goldberg, prosecutor for the Illinois Department of Professional Regulation, the agency that regulates doctors. “One doctor said, `Don’t let him off the unit. Don’t give him a weekend pass. His ex-wife’s afraid he’s going to kill her; he’s made threatening phone calls.’ “
Poole’s regular physician had noted in the patient’s chart on June 25 that Poole had threatened his wife and that she would not recommend discharge because of it, according to a July 8 internal memo from a medical staff member to the director of the medical staff. Late last week, the Department of Professional Regulation began disciplining Khadri.
Cray said Khadri looks forward to getting out his side of the story, beginning with his June 1 preliminary hearing before the agency’s medical disciplinary board.
“It was an unfortunate situation in that there was a loss of life,” Cray said Friday. “He believes that he is being singled out on something that is not of his making.”
Cray said that Khadri conducted an oral interview with Poole before discharging him and that he made the decision to release him with the input of other health workers. Cray declined to answer whether Khadri neglected to check the patient’s medical history before discharging him, saying only that Khadri followed proper medical procedures.
“Dr. Khadri did what he was required to do,” Cray said.
The July 8 memo that urges Khadri be stripped of his discharge privileges alleges that the Willowbrook psychiatrist made a questionable release a day before he authorized Poole’s. The memo is a part of the court file.
In that case, according to the memo, the patient had just been transferred to Tinley Park from incarceration in the Menard Correctional Center. He had a “serious psychiatric history including 20 previous . . . admissions,” had been violent toward staff workers and others while off medication, and had 110 days remaining on his court-ordered psychiatric commitment.
Earlier this year, Cray persuaded a Cook County Circuit Court judge to seal the court file in the case filed against the Tinley Park institution over Khadri’s firing. Cray argued that he wanted to protect Poole’s patient records.
Cray also won a judge’s order in November preventing state officials from reporting Khadri’s discharge from Tinley Park to the National Practitioner Data Bank, as is normal in cases of doctor suspensions or discharges.
Khadri, who obtained his Illinois medical license in 1988 and has received no previous disciplinary action, began working at the Tinley Park Mental Health Center in 1990, according to center records in the court file. His attorney said he did not know Khadri’s educational background.
Dr. Leigh Steiner, associate director for the office of mental health with the state Department of Human Services, said the center’s decision to fire Khadri was the correct one.
“Before you treat or discharge a patient, you need to know the information on that patient,” Steiner said. “That’s part of our process in hospital . . . to look at all those aspects of an individual’s functioning.”
She added it would not have been difficult to obtain Poole’s medical history; patients’ charts are kept at nursing stations on each unit. Meanwhile, Paula Poole, who still lives in Country Club Hills, said she plans to file suit against the Tinley Park Mental Health Center.
According to her attorney, George Vournazos, Cornell Poole snapped the moment his former wife decided to move her and her three teenage daughters out of their house last summer. He wrote a note, then tried to kill himself.
The two had divorced nearly a decade earlier, though they continued living together in the same Country Club Hills home. And it was Paula Poole who picked up her husband after he was discharged.
Soon after they arrived home, he shot her with two of their children present, Vournazos said.
“To me, they were very negligent,” Paula Poole said. “(His discharge) was too soon. It put me on the spot.”
