The state attorney general’s office is arguing to dismiss a lawsuit alleging medical malpractice after an incarcerated man died from peptic ulcer disease that went undiagnosed and untreated. 

The man, Alan Alterisi, died in May 2018 at age 58 after undergoing surgery at UConn Health’s John Dempsey Hospital. He had been incarcerated since 1997.

The complaint, filed by Alterisi’s sister Sally Walsh earlier this year in Hartford Superior Court, alleged that four doctors working in the Department of Correction had failed to adequately provide medical care for Alterisi over the course of several years, by not recommending further testing despite his ongoing symptoms. 

In an internal investigation completed after his death, a nurse consultant for the state, Marci Ouellette, said there were “missed opportunities” to identify Alterisi’s internal bleeding and treat it before it got to the point where it was unmanageable. Ouellette said that if Alterisi had received the necessary treatment from the DOC staff, “he likely would not have died on May 25, 2018.” 

A 2023 memo from DOC Director of Security Antonio Santiago also noted that a third-party review of Alterisi’s case had found “deviations from the professional standard of care, policies, and accepted medical standards.”   

In August 2017, Alterisi was found to have a spleen so enlarged that it was considered “high risk for rupture.” In February 2018, he reported having “black tarry stools.” But the nurse consultant’s report noted that he was never given the standard test used to detect blood in stools, and he was not referred to a specialist in gastroenterology. 

The report shows that Alterisi had complained of nausea, vomiting and frequent abdominal pain. He was anemic. Although he was scheduled to attend two medical appointments in late March and early April of 2018 at John Dempsey Hospital, he refused both times, saying he wasn’t able to “sit on a bus or sit at UConn all day.” At the time, he was in custody at Osborn Correctional Institution in Somers.

On May 4 of that year, he went to UConn’s John Dempsey Hospital in severe pain and vomiting blood, with dark stools. It was discovered that he was bleeding internally in his gastrointestinal system. Although he underwent surgery, he died on May 25. 

Ouellette wrote in an email in October 2021 that she believed a doctor who saw Alterisi in February of 2018 had “dropped the ball,” and that “he should have done something.” 

In a court hearing this week, Assistant Attorney General Kelly Deann Neyra argued that the case should be dismissed because a medical doctor who wrote a letter testifying to the DOC medical staff’s failures to properly care for Alterisi practiced in a different specialty than the doctors who treated Alterisi. Medical malpractices cases like this one require that plaintiffs submit testimony from outside medical professionals.

Neyra said this particular testimony didn’t satisfy the requirements for a medical malpractice suit.

In the unnamed doctor’s letter, dated Jan. 31 of this year, the author said he was board certified in preventative medicine and that he worked as a primary care doctor and medical director in “correctional settings” in Vermont, Washington, Maine, Florida and Ohio. Neyra argued that because the doctor was not a specialist who practiced in internal medicine, he did not have experience treating peptic ulcer disease.

She also said the state’s claims commissioner was incorrect to have allowed the case to proceed against the state. The state has sovereign immunity from medical malpractice lawsuits unless the claims commissioner authorizes the lawsuit.

Ken Krayeske, the attorney representing Sally Walsh, argued on Monday that peptic ulcer disease could be treated by general practice doctors in a correctional setting, and said the physician who wrote the letter did the same job that the four doctors implicated in the lawsuit had done. 

Beyond specific medical malpractice claims, the lawsuit also alleged “institutional malpractice” against the Department of Correction as a whole, claiming that the department, which at the time was working in a partnership with UConn Health, suffered from budget shortfalls, inadequate staffing, delays in care and a lack of oversight.

The Department of Correction terminated its partnership with UConn Health in 2018. 

Walsh told the Connecticut Mirror on Monday that the Department of Correction needed to admit wrongdoing in her brother’s case. She said it felt as though she was fighting a battle. 

“ These people here and the DOC, they need to all admit they screwed up,” she said. “My brother suffered. He suffered.”  

DOC Spokesperson Andrius Banevicius said in a statement that the department does not comment on ongoing litigation.

Krayeske said during the hearing that he was appalled that the state of Connecticut had not offered an apology for its role in Alterisi’s death. “I want a government that takes responsibility when it kills people,” he said. 

The judge in the case has 120 days to issue a ruling.