Christopher Driskill: Doctor Had Sex With Patient When He Was Supposed To Deliver Baby, Board Says

Christopher Driskill, a New Mexico OB-GYN doctor, was hit with a suspension of his license to practice medicine last week when the New Mexico Medical Board looked at the long list of accusations against him and decided that the 42-year-old physician posed “a clear and immediate danger to the public health and safety.”

The suspension came as a shock because Christopher Driskill is not some fly-by-night, back alley doctor — but the incoming president of the New Mexico Medical Society, a prestigious, 128-year-old organization which claims 85 percent of New Mexico doctors as members.

But in August, Driskill was fired by the clinic where he practiced, Premier Ob/Gyn of Hobbs, which cited the litany of accusations against him, alleging various instances of over-the-top improper conduct.

In perhaps the most shocking accusation, Driskill was reported to have admitted a pregnant woman in labor to Lea Regional Medical Center, but left her there unattended while he was off in an undetermined location having sex with another patient.

That sort of behavior may have happened repeatedly, as the board cited multiple instances in which Driskill brought in women about to give birth but failed to materialize to perform the delivery — ignoring the desperate attempts of nurses and other hospital staff to summon him.

“On one occasion, an emergency cesarean-section operation was delayed because of your delay in arriving at LRMC,” the board wrote, in its public notice of Driskill’s suspension.

The board also said that Driskill prescribed Alprazolam pills — more commonly known as Xanax — to a woman with whom he was having a sexual relationship, without any medical records to justify the prescription.

Driskill’s problems may stem at least in part from alcoholism. According to the board, Driskill often drank on the job, and maintained a “personal cache” of booze in his hospital office.

“Your sexual relationships and abuse of alcohol have negatively affected your practice of medicine,” the board told Driskill in its notice.

He was also accused of making “inappropriate” notes “of a personal nature” on the medical charts of some patients, and performing a pelvic exam on a woman without the required female observer present in the room.

When Driskill was fired by the Premier Ob/Gyn clinic, he failed to report his termination, as required, to Lea Regional Medical Center. Instead, he requested a “temporary leave of absence” from the hospital and never went back.

The board must now take up the issue of whether to bar Christopher Driskill from practicing medicine in New Mexico on a permanent basis.