The Cook County Sheriff’s Office is strongly encouraging former patients of a deceased Evergreen Park pediatrician whose vaccination practices have come under scrutiny to check their immunization status after some former patients learned they lacked immunity to some or all of the diseases for which they believed they had been vaccinated.
The agency, which last month announced it was investigating whether Dr. Van Koinis may have been falsifying documents for parents who did not want to vaccinate their children, said Monday that two of Koinis’ former patients who are now adults and seven parents whose children were patients recently learned the doctor may not have provided them the vaccinations they sought.
The individuals, who sought to confirm their immunization statuses in response to last month’s public alert about Koinis, contacted the sheriff’s office after testing determined they lacked immunity to some or all of the diseases for which they’d sought vaccinations, the agency said.
In some cases, parents reported that results varied between their own children, indicating that one may have been vaccinated while another was under-vaccinated or showed no evidence of vaccination, the sheriff’s office said.
In total, 32 former patients or their parents have contacted the sheriff’s office with questions or concerns about Koinis in the past month, spokeswoman Sophia Ansari said. Seven of those callers, representing 12 children and two adults, shared the results of their blood tests with the agency and five others are still awaiting results, she said.
Of the 14 former patients who have shared results to date — all of whom had sought vaccinations and witnessed Koinis administer them — only one had full immunity to the diseases for which they believed they’d been vaccinated, Ansari said. The other 13 ranged from having no immunity to partial immunity, she said.
Ansari said it was unclear why so many of the patients had not acquired immunity despite receiving vaccinations, but that due to the discrepancies and the concern that Koinis may not have been vaccinating patients who sought immunizations, the sheriff’s office is urging any former patients to contact their health care providers to get their vaccinations checked.
A blood test can reveal if someone has received a vaccine, but it’s not useful for all vaccines.
For many of the typical vaccines, however, blood tests will determine if a child has received the immunization, said Dr. Tina Tan, professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and pediatrician at Lurie Children’s Hospital.
Questions about Koinis’ vaccination practices came to light following his death by suicide last year.
In a note that was found in his car, Koinis “seemingly confessed to maintaining improper patient charts and falsifying patient immunization records,” Sheriff Tom Dart wrote in a Jan. 31 letter to the director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, advising her of the situation.
He called Koinis’ disclosure “troubling” and said it suggested that children may have been exposed to vaccine-preventable diseases and that schools may have been provided inaccurate student vaccination records.
All students in Illinois must be vaccinated for preventable communicable diseases and provide local school officials proof of vaccination to enroll, although exemptions to the law exist both for medical conditions and religious objections.
Sheriff’s investigators are working with Alzhein Pediatrics, which is in possession of Koinis’ medical records, and the Department of Public Health in what remains an ongoing investigation, agency officials said.
Alzhein last month referred all questions to Little Company of Mary Hospital in Evergreen Park, where Koinis’ obituary said he practiced. A public health department spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the agency’s involvement in the sheriff’s investigation.
Dart, in his letter to department director Ngozi Ezike, described his agency’s probe as “an investigation into potential criminal wrongdoing into Dr. Koinis, the practice and other individuals.”
No charges have been announced in connection with the doctor’s suspected conspiracy to falsify vaccination records and Ansari declined to say whether any other individuals had been implicated in the apparent deception.
Koinis, whose medical practice was located at 3830 W. 95th St., Evergreen Park, and primarily served patients on Chicago’s Southwest Side and southwest suburbs, had also been affiliated with Little Company of Mary Hospital in Evergreen Park and Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, according to his obituary.
OSF Healthcare, of which Little Company of Mary is a part, issued a statement last month saying Koinis was an independent physician at a private practice, and referred all questions to the sheriff’s office.
Koinis, 58, of Chicago, is believed to have gone missing Aug. 17, after canceling a scheduled dinner with his sister and telling his mother he was going on vacation, according to a Cook County medical examiner’s case report.
Koinis’ sister filed a missing persons report with Oak Brook police on Sept. 9, after being unable to reach her brother for more than three weeks, according to the report.
The following day, after learning that Koinis’ abandoned white Jaguar had been towed from a Cook County forest preserve in Palos Township two weeks earlier, police searched Spears Woods and soon found the doctor’s remains, the report states.
A revolver was found next to the remains and a note found in the doctor’s vehicle was sent to the Robert J. Stein Institute of Forensic Medicine for analysis, according to the medical examiner’s report.
While sheriff’s police have declined to release the note itself, Dart said last month that it focused on Koinis’ regrets over his vaccination practices and provided a possible motivation for his death, which the medical examiner ruled a suicide by intra-oral gunshot wound.
Koinis, a well-known advocate for homeopathic medical techniques who had been licensed to practice in Illinois since 1991, was frequently sought out by people opposed to vaccination, the sheriff said.
Investigators ask anyone with information about the pediatrician to call Cook County Sheriff’s Police at 708-397-6366. A medical record line for inquiries about personal or family medical records also has been set up at 630-670-1673.
zkoeske@tribpub.com
Twitter @ZakKoeske
