It never brings me joy to break these stories to the health community. From the very first (Jeff Bradstreet, MD) to the countless others since June, my heart goes out to the families. I’ve even had the honor of meeting some of them in the last few months.

I am not counting Dr. El Sanadi, who was found dead yesterday here on the east coast of Florida, as “doctor #14” in my unintended series, as not enough is known at this time.

Nabil El Sanadi MD, formerly of the Cleveland Clinic, president and CEO of Broward Health (who had recently been under federal investigation) allegedly shot and killed himself Saturday at his Lauderdale-by-the-Sea residence.

UPDATE 1: We thought the suicide seemed a bit suspicious before, but when we add this recent story to the mix, it seems even MORE suspicious:

Update 2: It was ruled a suicide, but there are a few odd circumstances to his death.

Here is one thing that strikes us as strange:

“When El Sanadi was found in a pool of blood on the bathroom floor, he had already tucked his gun, a white metal Smith & Wesson .38 revolver, into the front right pocket of his sweatpants.

“The brain has 10-15 seconds of oxygen after the heart stops working,” Broward’s Chief Medical Examiner Craig Mallak said. That would have given El Sanadi enough time to put the gun in his pocket before he collapsed, he said.” (Editor’s note: seriously?!)

That just leaves us scratching our head, as we’ve never heard of someone killing themselves and then putting their gun away AFTER the fact…

End of update.

Back to original article:

From the Sun Sentinel:

Dr. El Sanadi was appointed to Broward Health’s leadership position in December 2014. He often spoke out about social issues in the county, including the recent scourge of the synthetic drug flakka.

We are told the doctor was brought in to help Broward Health after they’d been under investigation by the feds (which would have allegedly started before he came on the job).

From the piece:

El Sanadi, 60, had undergone a heart bypass surgery about 10 days ago, DiPietro confirmed. “He sounded great, for a guy who just had his chest surgically opened,” Di Pietro said. “We talked about what we wanted for Broward Health.” With an annual budget of $1.2 billion, Broward Health is one of the country’s 10 largest public health systems, providing hospital and health care services for the northern two-thirds of Broward County.

Broward Sheriff’s Office personnel were called to Dr. Nabil El Sanadi’s address, 5100 N. Ocean Blvd., just before 4 p.m. on Jan. 23, 2016 about a person who had reportedly fallen in a restroom in the condominium’s lobby, said Broward Sheriff’s spokeswoman Veda Coleman-Wright. She confirmed there had been a self-inflicted shooting at the address and that an adult male had been declared dead at the scene. She later identified him as El Sanadi. El Sanadi was the president and CEO of Broward Health. The system operates four hospitals, with a total of 1,529 beds, with more than 8,000 employees and some 1,800 doctors.

It is unclear at this point if the prominent MD is the same person who fell in the lobby restroom at his residence or if that is a coincidence. We will update you as more details emerge.

More from the piece:

In September, Broward Health, known legally as the North Broward Health District, reached a $69 million settlement with the federal government after it accused the district of maintaining a secret compensation system that rewarded physicians for steering referral work to the district’s laboratories, imaging departments and other services and penalized them for taking on charity cases. Born in Cairo, El Sanadi came to the U.S. with his family in the 1960s. “My family decided to emigrate because the United States is the land of the free and the brave and there was a lot of discrimination against Christians in Egypt at that point in time,” he told the Miami Herald in an interview in April 2015. El Sanadi graduated with honors with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and went on to graduate from medical school at Ohio State University. He also earned an MBA at Case. He completed his medical residency and a one-year research fellowship at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Cleveland.

We might note here that the Cleveland Clinic is one of the most progressive and holistic minded hospitals in the United States, and recently kicked McDonalds out of the food court, which I covered earlier this year on Health Nut News.

While chief of emergency medicine at University Hospitals of Cleveland, El Sanadi directed a teaching and research-focused emergency department. He held faculty appointments at Florida International University, Nova Southeastern University and the University of Miami. When appointed in December 2014 to succeed Broward Health president and CEO Frank Nask, El Sanadi said he planned to continue working one of two emergency room shifts a month so that he could maintain his skills and understand the impact of his boardroom decisions.

We have heard locals here in our Florida health community speaking highly of this prominent MD and his many accomplishments.

Please subscribe to the newsletter for updates on this story (as it’s tough to keep up with the hundreds of emails a day asking for updates). We’ll have more interviews with family members of the mostly holistic doctors who have died this past year. While most are holistic, we have chosen to include doctors like El Sanadi, who obviously was prominently known here in Florida, and his alleged suicide is raising many eyebrows here in our community.

Source: SunSentinel

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