CAUGHT ON CAMERA Video surveillance captured Adam Dorin, MD, MBA, taking propofol from operating rooms at a San Diego-area hospital where he worked.

When officials at a California hospital suspected that someone was stealing drugs from anesthesia carts, they equipped the carts with motion-activated cameras. The video surveillance worked.

The hidden cameras captured anesthesiologist Adam Dorin, MD, MBA, placing vials of drugs, including propofol, in his scrub top pocket a dozen times. They also recorded much more: women under anesthesia undergoing C-sections, tubal ligations and other gynecological procedures — along with footage Dr. Dorin says would exonerate him because it shows him administering and returning the drugs he had taken. Dr. Dorin's medical license is on the line, but the hospital doesn't want to release the additional footage because, it says, it can't compromise "vulnerable, exposed" patients. It's all part of a controversy brewing at Sharp Grossmont Hospital's Women's Health Center in La Mesa, Calif.

The hospital had mounted small video cameras inside computer monitors attached to anesthesia carts used in 3 operating rooms at the Women's Health Center. At the core of the conflict are the thousands of video clips the hidden cameras secretly recorded during the investigation, which went on for nearly a year starting in July 2012.

Dr. Dorin, formerly an Outpatient Surgery editorial board member, adamantly denies that he took the medications for his own use, saying it's not uncommon for anesthesiologists to move drugs from one operating room to another to keep them stocked. Dr. Dorin and his lawyer, Duane Admire, call the charges trumped up, in retaliation for his being an activist and whistleblower.

The hidden cameras automatically recorded whenever someone stepped in front of a cart. Twelve of the clips show Dr. Dorin removing vials, including propofol, from carts and putting them "into his shirt pocket," according to court documents.

Mr. Admire questions how secretive Dr. Dorin was trying to be. First, he says, "you can see [in the videos] he puts them right in his front pocket. That pocket's just kind of hanging open. Anybody standing next to him can just look down his pocket and see what he's got. He wasn't trying to hide them." Second, Mr. Admire says it was not uncommon for physicians to keep drug vials in their scrubs. "It was the culture at that time at that hospital," he says.

Dr. Dorin initially denied taking the drugs, but he admitted to doing so after being confronted with video evidence. He later resigned his position at Sharp Grossmont in 2013 and now practices at Palmdale (Calif.) Regional Medical Center. Based at least in part on a letter it received from the hospital, the California Medical Board has filed a formal complaint against Dr. Dorin and is seeking to suspend his medical license. The case is scheduled for an October hearing.

Questions remain about what the other video clips show. Dr. Dorin maintains that some likely show him either administering the drugs to patients or returning them. He's subpoenaed nearly 7,000 other videos recorded between February and June of 2013. The hospital, however, has moved to quash the subpoena, because, among other things, many clips also show, in the words of lawyers representing the hospital, "female patients in their most vulnerable state, under anesthesia, exposed and undergoing medical procedures." Further, say hospital lawyers, "none of the other 6,966 video clips provide any exculpatory evidence for Dr. Dorin."

But Dr. Dorin contends that months before the hospital sent its letter to the board, the hospital's executive committee exonerated him, and that the effort to have his license suspended is the result of a vendetta. In 2008, Dr. Dorin e-mailed a San Diego newspaper about a death at the hospital, accusing another surgeon of providing "erroneous, misleading and perhaps fraudulent" information about events that preceded the death. Although he was identified only as an anonymous Sharp Grossmont physician in a news account that followed, the hospital "knew who it was, because the administrator said, that doctor's out to get us, he's got an axe to grind," says Mr. Admire.

According to Mr. Admire, many other anesthesiologists who practiced at the hospital at the time were "moonlighting at other surgical centers" and "it was not uncommon to borrow supplies from the hospital." But Dr. Dorin, he says, was working only at the hospital, "so when they confronted him and said, 'Hey, you took propofol,'" he denied it. "He thought they were saying he took it off campus," says Mr. Admire. The medical board's case rests on that denial, says Mr. Admire. "They aren't even saying he took anything inappropriately. In the end they're saying you weren't honest with the investigator when he first asked you if you took the drug."

Along with insisting that nothing in the other videos would exonerate Dr. Dorin, the hospital claims that the legal requirements involved in turning over the clips "would place an unreasonable financial burden on it." To comply with California civil code, it says, it would have to notify all third parties whose personal privacy would be infringed by compliance with the subpoena. "Given the number of persons who appear in the 6,966 video clips, this would require numerous hours to identify, find, and notify such persons." In fact, says the hospital, the task might be impossible.

Meanwhile, Mr. Admire contends the hospital's video surveillance violated the privacy rights of hundreds of patients. The women who appear in the videos were not informed that they were being videotaped, acknowledges John Cihomsky, a spokesperson for Sharp HealthCare. "They didn't have to be. It's part of the medical record," he says.

In a statement, the hospital says, "video was automatically recorded only when medical personnel stepped in front of the anesthesia cart" and that "access to the footage was strictly limited to Sharp investigators." Further, it says, "the only footage sent to the California Medical Board were clips that showed the medication being removed from the anesthesia cart by the doctor. All other footage that may have captured images of patients in the background has been retained in a secure environment and following conclusion of this case, all video footage will be destroyed."

But in trying to keep the videos from having to be turned over, the hospital has also noted the "vulnerable" and "exposed" nature of many of the female subjects.

Mr. Admire claims that the hospital "accidentally gave us a clip with a patient." The video, he says, "is awfully clear and it's awfully explicit. I'll give them this: They had very good cameras."

The bottom line, says Mr. Admire, is that the video clips exist and that it's unfair to rely on 12 of 7,000 while simply dismissing the others as irrelevant. "You can't use those clips," he says, "but not allow him access to the rest of the footage that could exonerate him."

Jim Burger