Married doctor, 42, 'left woman to give birth unattended because he was busy having sex with another patient' 
 
 Dr Christopher Driskill, a married dad with four kids, 'kept a stash of alcohol at work, drank on the job and worked while under the influence' 
 
 He 'had sex with multiple patients and former staff members' 
 
 He 'wrote lewd notes on medical charts and left women to give birth alone' 
 
 Driskill, the incoming president of the New Mexico Medical Society, has now been suspended by the state medical board and his license is under review 
 
 Suspended: Dr Christopher Driskill allegedly kept a stash of alcohol in his office and drank on the job 
 
 A doctor has been suspended by the New Mexico Medical Board after he allegedly had sex with patients, drank alcohol on the job and left women to give birth unattended. 
 
 Dr Christopher Driskill, a married father-of-four from Hobbs, is even accused of leaving a woman in labor alone because he was busy having sex with another patient, according to the board's report, shared by the Albuquerque Journal. 
 
 He posed a 'clear and immediate danger to the public' for his multiple infractions, the board ruled. 
 
 Driskill, the incoming president of the New Mexico Medical Society, has not yet appealed the decision. The board is now considering whether to revoke his license but a hearing date has not been set. 
 
 The board's report listed a number of startling incidents, the Journal reported. He has been accused of having sex with several of his patients, including some who worked for his former practice, and of prescribing drugs to a girlfriend without proper medical records. 
 
 He also allegedly drank alcohol at work and worked while he was under the influence. He even had a stash of alcohol in his office, according to the report. 
 
 He left moms-to-be to give birth unattended on multiple occasions 'within the past few years' at Lea Regional Medical Center and was once late to work so delayed a c-section, the board said. 
 
 'Family man': Driskill, pictured with his wife and their children, allegedly had sex with his patients and staff - and once missed a woman giving birth because he was having sex with a patient 
 
 'Danger': The medical board ruled that the doctor posed a 'clear and immediate danger to the public' 
 
 And in other instances, he wrote lewd personal notes in medical charts of certain patients. 
 
 'Your sexual relationships and abuse of alcohol have negatively affected your practice of medicine,' the board said in its suspension notice, the Journal reported. 
 
 In August, Driskill was fired from his job at Premier Health in Hobbs and 10 days later, Premier told his other workplace, the Lea Regional Medical Center, of his termination. 
 
 He had by then requested a temporary leave of absence and has not returned to work since - but he failed to tell the board about his termination and leave of absence, as is protocol. 
 
 Scene: He worked at Premier Health and the Lea Regional Medical Center, which are next to each other in Hobbs, New Mexico. The report accuses him of stashing alcohol at his Premier Health office 
 
 The doctor was 'president-elect' of the New Mexico Medical Society and was expected to become president of the society in May. 
 
 A representative from the organization, which represents the majority of physicians in New Mexico, said it would not comment on the matter until after the hearing. ||||| New Mexico ob-gyn Christopher Driskill allegedly kept a stash of liquor at work, drank constantly, casually prescribed drugs, had sex with patients, and abandoned women while they were in labor [via Albuquerque Journal. Driskill, president of the New Mexico Medical Society, is now under investigation and may lose his license. 
 
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 Driskill, 42, reportedly kept a stash of liquor so he could drink at work, and habitually left the room while patients were in labor, including one instance where a woman needed an emergency C-section. In one case, he wasn't present because he was having sex with another patient. According to the investigation, Driskill had multiple sexual relationships with patients and employees. 
 
 Driskill's license is currently suspended, and although he has the right to a hearing, he has not yet requested it. Driskill has also not commented on the matter. I don't know much about the Hippocratic Oath, but I'm pretty sure there's stuff in there that covers not being drunk and banging everyone. 
 
 Follow Frank on Twitter. ||||| On a typical day Heather Bartos, M.D., sees about 30 patients; in an average month she delivers 20 to 25 babies. An ob-gyn practicing about 45 minutes outside Dallas and chief of obstetrics and gynecology at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Denton, she also spends a day a week in surgery and another tackling administrative tasks. She works through lunch every day so she can attempt to get home at a reasonable hour to see her kids, but the fact that a woman can go into labor at any time makes her days and nights pretty unpredictable. Sometimes the pace is overwhelming. “I know I can’t keep it up forever,” says Dr. Bartos. 
 
 There’s another reason Dr. Bartos’ schedule is so hectic: She’s one of only a handful of obstetricians in Denton. A few years from now, when she’s in her early fifties (she’s 47), she plans to scale back her patient load and handle only five or six deliveries each month. She doesn’t know who, if anyone, will step in to take her place. “There’s a really high rate of burnout among ob-gyns,” she says, and there aren’t many young doctors clamoring to start their careers in areas like hers. The potential fallout? Denton could have a shortage of ob-gyns even greater than it already has. 
 
 A lack of ob-gyns is increasingly a national problem. Right now half—half—of all counties in the U.S. do not have a single obstetrician, says Hal Lawrence III, M.D., executive vice president and CEO of the Ameri­can College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG). A recent ACOG report concluded that women in Arizona, Washington, Utah, and Idaho face the greatest risk of a severe ob-gyn shortage; Florida, Texas, North Carolina, and Nevada could soon be next, because the female population in those areas is growing without new ob-gyns flooding in. The problem could reach major cities too, according to Doximity, a network for physicians and clinicians. After polling its members and cross-­referencing those results with things like birth records and population data, Doximity found that cities including Las Vegas, Orlando, Los Angeles, Miami, Detroit, Memphis, Salt Lake City, and St. Louis, could soon be without enough ob-gyns. 
 
 Where the ob-gyns are 
 
 A few key factors are driving the decline: first, burnout. “About a third of providers stop obstetrics within the first 10 to 12 years of practicing,” says Dr. Lawrence. While some of them transition to only routine gynecological care, which tends to be less stressful and allows for more regular work hours, others turn to subspecialties like urogynecology or gynecological oncology that don’t entail delivering babies. “It’s a demanding field, and there’s a lot of nighttime work,” says Dr. Lawrence. “You have to really love what you do.” Even ob-gyns who stick it out retire earlier—at age 59 on average, according to Doximity—than primary care physicians, who tend to practice until their mid-sixties. 
 
 Right now half— half —of all counties in the U.S. do not have a single obstetrician. 
 
 Another reason: compensation. Sometimes the cash coming home isn’t enough to make up for the intense workload and erratic hours (especially true for providers who accept Medicaid, which generally reimburses doctors at rates much lower than private insurance companies). But the bigger money issue is insurance. Obstetricians face one of the highest rates of malpractice cases. As a result, malpractice insurance is often incredibly expensive. In some areas, says Dr. Bartos, “you could spend almost a third of your salary on insurance.” 
 
 Valerie Jones, M.D., an ob-gyn in the Maryland suburbs who retired early from clinical care, was warned about the insurance burden before starting her career. “I remember hearing that when you leave residency, you should expect to be sued at least twice in your career,” she says. But she was dismayed by how health care in the U.S. can sometimes emphasize productivity and cost-­effectiveness over quality of patient care. Disillusioned, she left the field last year when she was only 37, after a health scare of her own led her to reevaluate her priorities and motivated her to spend more time with her three children. 
 
 While Dr. Jones admits that it’s unusual to stop practicing entirely in your late thirties, she understands why young physicians drop the obstetrics part of the job and just stick with gynecology. “The highs you get from delivering a healthy baby are like no other, but the lows are very low too,” she says. Even when a doctor has done nothing wrong, she says, “If there’s a bad outcome during childbirth, it’s devastating for everyone involved.” 
 
 “Women, especially those with high-risk pregnancies or who find themselves in an emergency situa­tion, should still have access to the skills and expertise of an obstetrician—there’s no replacement.” 
 
 One thing is for sure: A lack of interest in the profession isn’t the problem. ACOG has thousands of student members at med schools across the country. “Residency slots [for obstetrics and gynecology] fill up on match day,” says Dr. Lawrence. Creating more of those slots would help, but someone needs to pay for it. “Right now residencies in all specialties are funded by the government,” he says, though a few hospitals are experimenting with private funding. 
 
 How a shortage could impact your care 
 
 If you live in a major metropolitan area, you may not feel the hit of fewer providers, says William Rayburn, M.D., emeritus chair of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of New Mexico and author of the ACOG report. Elsewhere the shortage will likely mean longer drives to find a provider, longer wait times, or even rushed or poor care. Those frustrations led Amanda Baker, 45, who lives in rural Virginia, to start seeing a nurse practitioner (NP), even though she has a family history of ovarian cancer. “I have no problem seeing an NP,” she says. “For women here, if you can afford to leave the area for care, you leave; if not, you accept the status quo.” 
 
 Relying on other medical professionals, including NPs, physicians assistants (PAs), and midwives, is one way women can get care in the face of a physician shortage. Laws vary by state, but in many places NPs, PAs, and midwives can prescribe medication, diagnose infections, and perform checkups. While they don’t have the same level of training as M.D.s, Dr. Lawrence says they help build very effective care “teams”: Picture a practice with a handful of midwives, NPs, and PAs and one or two obstetricians who can step in when necessary. “This [team approach] expands access to care in areas that might have only one or two ob-gyns,” he explains. 
 
 Telehealth, using technology to consult a doctor virtually, could also become an increasingly essential tool. Web or mobile services can help you “see” a doctor; for example, nurx.com has providers licensed in many states who consult via chat and write prescriptions for birth control that the service delivers. At amwell.com you can consult a virtual gynecologist for help with a urinary tract infection, STI, and more. (While you may be accustomed to having a pelvic exam as part of a checkup, guidelines from the American College of Physicians say that’s no longer necessary for most healthy women who aren’t pregnant.) 
 
 While these are all creative solutions, Dr. Jones is concerned about relying too heavily on them. “Women, especially those with high-risk pregnancies or who find themselves in an emergency situa­tion, should still have access to the skills and expertise of an obstetrician,” she says. “There’s no replacement.” 
 
 To get or maintain access to real-life ob-gyns, rural communities may have to figure out incentives to lure physicians away from major metropolitan areas, such as offering to pay off medical school loans, suggests Dr. Lawrence. Malpractice reform would also help, says Dr. Jones, to weed out frivolous but expensive lawsuits. 
 
 Expanding government funding for medical residency programs so that more ob-gyns could start training each year would also make a huge difference. But public funds for these programs have been frozen since the Clinton administration; they weren’t increased under President Obama, and it seems unlikely that they’d be unfrozen under President Trump. “Access to women’s health care waxes and wanes with each election,” says Dr. Bartos. “It should always be a priority.”
– Dr. Christopher S. Driskill, one of the few OB/GYNs in Hobbs, New Mexico, was appreciated by many of his patients and admired by his colleagues. But the New York Times reports that Driskill now faces serious allegations, from drinking on the job to failing to show up at a delivery because he was sleeping with another patient at the time, and his license has been suspended as a result. The New Mexico Medical Board confronted Driskill with the accusations, which also include neglecting other patients who were in labor and writing "inappropriate notations of a personal nature into certain patient medical charts," but as of last week, the prosecutor for the board reached an agreement with Driskill that could allow him to start practicing again if it's approved by the board next month. The drama has been the talk of the town—and beyond. Cosmopolitan theorized in a headline, "This Might Be the Worst Doctor Ever," and Britain's Daily Mail, not surprisingly, covered the salacious story from a continent away. The story "had me wondering if he was drunk on the job when he did my three kids," says one Hobbs resident. The trouble started when Driskill, 42, who is married with four kids, was fired from Premier OB/GYN in August for allegedly being intoxicated while working and keeping a "personal cache of alcohol" in his office, as well as allegedly sleeping with patients. But the claims seem strange to people like Dr. Jose Garcia, a pediatrician who's worked closely with Driskill and who says he's a "health nut" whom Garcia has never seen drink at social gatherings. No criminal charges have been filed. (Click to read a happier story about a surprise baby's delivery.)