Health Scare

Employee complaints prompt investigation of ASU health center

Comments (0) By Joe Watson Thursday, May 27 2004

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Steve Leach, a Sanders & Parks attorney who has been working on the investigation with lead attorney Bob Bruno since January, declined to discuss any information from the investigation's preliminary findings. However, he says he expects the report to be submitted to ASU by Memorial Day, May 31.

But university officials claim the report is confidential, per attorney/client privilege, and say they will not release the report to the public. That has some parents of former student athletes treated by Erickson worried that ASU will whitewash the findings.

Emily Piraino

All is allegedly not well at the ASU Student Health and Wellness Center.

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"If [ASU doesn't] do something about Erickson and Rimsza, I'm afraid I'll be forced to take some other course of action," says Faye Allen, who claims that Erickson -- who has a clean record with the Arizona Board of Medical Examiners -- misdiagnosed her son, former ASU basketball player Justin Allen, in 2000, with a mere groin strain before he was correctly diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease a month and a half later by another ASU doctor. Turns out, Allen's Hodgkin's was discovered in the lymph nodes of his groin.

Of Erickson, Faye Allen says, "I can't stand by and watch him practice the kind of medicine he is practicing."

E-mail joe.watson@newtimes.com, or call 602-744-6557.