Testimony in the trial involving the defamation case former doctor William Husel brought against his former employer, Mount Carmel Health System and its parent company Trinity Health, is expected to continue next week.
Husel was acquitted of 14 counts of murder in 2022.
He claims Mount Carmel defamed him during the investigation into his prescribing habits. There was no testimony Friday.
On Thursday, Dr. Jesse Raiten took the stand for Mount Carmel to refute testimony from Husel and his witnesses that the doses of painkillers Husel gave to patients in the Mount Carmel ICU were appropriate.
"The way he was dosing these patients falls far out of the spectrum of the standard of care. It falls along the lines of, analogously to the surgeon who says, just take the arm off to treat the fracture. It's an extreme recommendation for how to take care of these people," Raiten said.
Raiten is a professor of clinical anesthesiology and critical care at the University of Pennsylvania.
Attorneys questioning Raiten reminded the jury that Husel's prescribing practices weren't on trial, and that the trial is about whether or not Mount Carmel's statements ought to be considered defamatory.
Mount Carmel is standing by its issued statements. The health system claims that it had a duty to protect patients from Husel, and point out that Husel willingly gave up his medical license.
Earlier this week, Husel told the jury he only tried to help dying people find comfort with the doses he prescribed, and that different patients required different, sometimes higher doses of pain medication.
"They said that I intentionally administered lethal doses of the fentanyl. When I saw the word 'intentional,' I was thinking, you know, 'why would I do CPR on someone, bring them back to life and save their life, then an hour later, intentionally kill them?' Just didn't make any sense to me," Husel said during his testimony.
Husel said the patients died from their underlying illnesses.
