New Mexico

NM neurosurgeon Mark Erasmus deemed unfit for duty after claims more than two dozen patients, some partially paralyzed,

Published

12 months ago

January 12, 2025

NM neurosurgeon Mark Erasmus deemed unfit for duty after claims more than two dozen patients, some partially paralyzed,

Jan. 12—After $19 million in medical malpractice payouts to settle 26 patient claims, Albuquerque neurosurgeon Mark Erasmus has lost his license to practice medicine in New Mexico.

It didn’t come soon enough for Diane Jennifer Gutierrez, a 52-year-old single mother who is now partially paralyzed.

The New Mexico Medical Board concluded last April that Erasmus exhibited “manifest incapacity or incompetence,” making him unfit to continue working as a doctor. A state district judge on Dec. 30 upheld the board’s decision to revoke Erasmus’ medical license, but he intends to appeal.

Erasmus, who was first licensed as a physician in New Mexico in 1979, is also fighting a malpractice lawsuit filed by Gutierrez against him and Lovelace Medical Center in Albuquerque, where she underwent spinal fusion in February 2022 to relieve upper back and shoulder pain that radiated down her left arm, her lawsuit stated.

“She literally walked in there and never walked again,” said her attorney Lisa Curtis of Albuquerque last week. Deposition testimony in the case shows that a month before the surgery, Erasmus had some kind of medical event that forced him to stop operating on a different patient. Another surgeon had to finish the procedure.

Curtis contends he passed out, but Erasmus said he never lost consciousness and was later cleared by a cardiologist.

Gutierrez is one of four of Erasmus’ former patients currently suing him for medical negligence in New Mexico state district court. Three of the four are now wheelchair users or are quadriplegic.

Since 2021, the 73-year-old physician has been sued for medical malpractice nine times — a factor cited in the license revocation order by the state medical board, which oversees licensing and discipline of physicians and physician assistants in the state.

The board also contended there was credible evidence that from 2001 to the present, more than $19 million has been paid out by insurance carriers to settle 26 malpractice claims involving Erasmus.

The board also cited the fact that Erasmus agreed to undergo a “fitness for duty evaluation and a neuropsychological evaluation to determine safety to practice.” The evaluations began in December 2022, 10 months after Gutierrez’s surgery.

“The results of those evaluations show respondent is not fit to practice medicine,” stated a notice of contemplated action the medical board sent to Erasmus in September 2023.

His attorney, Bryan Davis, in an appeal of the board’s decision, contended his client had been deemed unfit for duty specifically as a neurosurgeon but wasn’t considered unfit to practice medicine generally.

Davis also contended that the $19 million in payouts was “unsubstantiated” and contended the allegation “ignored the reality that insurance companies settle medical malpractice cases that are defensible and winnable for many reasons besides whether the physician actually committed malpractice.” There were also defendants other than Erasmus who were named in the lawsuits, Davis wrote.

Davis, in a phone interview on Friday, said his client didn’t want to settle some of the claims but was overruled by other defendants, such as the hospitals that were sued.

In recent years, Davis said, Erasmus had some health conditions, including long COVID. At the time of Gutierrez’s surgery he also was going through a bad divorce, according to board documents.

Erasmus would like to be able to teach, do insurance reviews and independent medical exams, stated the board in recounting his testimony during a 2023 hearing on his license.

“He’s not intending to set foot in an operating room again,” Davis told the Journal.

Several of the lawsuits fault Lovelace for permitting Erasmus to work as a neurosurgeon in its facilities despite his history of malpractice payouts.

“It can be only for monetary profit that Lovelace Medical Center and its owners and operators would hire, retain, credential and privilege such a well-known incompetent surgeon as Dr. Erasmus,” stated Gutierrez’s lawsuit. Erasmus was employed as a staff neurosurgeon by Southwest Medical Group at Lovelace Medical Center from 2020 to February 2023. Previously, he was affiliated with Presbyterian Hospital.

Holly Armstrong, an Albuquerque attorney representing Erasmus and Lovelace in the Gutierrez case, wrote in one court filing that the defendants “deny they provided negligent care to Ms. Gutierrez, deny they breached the appropriate standard of care, and deny there were any improper omissions in the care provided.” Armstrong couldn’t be reached for comment late last week.

Erasmus has blamed Gutierrez’s injuries on a stroke, but her lawsuit disputes that as the cause of her permanent weakness in her arms and legs and paralysis. It alleges Erasmus permanently damaged her spinal cord and later wrote in her medical record that there were no complications in surgery.

State records show it’s rare for the New Mexico Medical Board to revoke a physician’s license, and even more unusual for the board to cite malpractice settlements as among the reasons to open an inquiry. Typically, revocations have occurred when physicians have sexual relations with patients, are criminally charged with crimes like drunken driving, or overprescribe opioids.

Interim Medical Board executive director Monique Parks told the Journal in an email last week that details about the board’s investigations are confidential.

Asked why the board decided to take action on Erasmus’ license after 26 malpractice claims, Parks said, “It is common practice for state medical boards to use malpractice data as a tool to detect unprofessional conduct that may violate the Medical Practice Act. Some boards have built-in levels of malpractice that trigger investigations, such as a certain number of malpractice settlements in a certain span of time.”

Parks wouldn’t say whether the New Mexico Medical Board has adopted such a “built-in level” for malpractice claims, saying only, “medical malpractice settlements and claims may be an important consideration in deciding the scope of a complaint and investigation by the board.”

“The NMMB staff exercises broad discretion,” she added, “depending on the facts and circumstances, when opening an investigation and an administrative proceeding, with the oversight and expertise of our board members as mandated by the Medical Practice Act.”

The Gutierrez lawsuit faulted Lovelace officials for failing to warn Gutierrez before her surgery about the multiple other prior malpractice claims naming Erasmus.

“She’s a smart lady and she couldn’t have known this,” said Curtis. At the time of the surgery, she added, Gutierrez had been taking care of her son, now 11, after receiving a buyout from Verizon, where she had been a manager.

Curtis lauded the board’s decision.

“I think the board was trying to send a message: We’re not going to tolerate this quality of physicians for patients anymore.”

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New Mexico

Understanding New Mexico’s data center boom | Opinion

Published

10 hours ago

January 8, 2026

Press Room

Understanding New Mexico’s data center boom | Opinion

Paul Gessing, Rio Grande Foundation
| Las Cruces Sun-News

After years of failure to land a “big fish” business for New Mexico’s economy (or effectively use the oil and gas revenues to grow the economy) Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham with the help of her Economic Development Secretary Rob Black have lured no fewer than three large data centers to New Mexico. These data centers are being built to serve the booming world of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and they will have profound impacts on New Mexico.

It is our view that having these data centers locate in New Mexico is better than having them locate elsewhere. While we have many differences of opinion with this governor, we are pleased to see her get serious about growing and diversifying New Mexico’s oil-dependent economy albeit quite late in her second term.

Sadly, the governor and legislature have chosen not to use broad based economic reforms like deregulation or tax cuts to improve New Mexico’s competitiveness. But, with the failure of her “preferred” economic development “wins” like Maxeon and Ebon solar both of which the governor announced a few years ago, but haven’t panned out, the focus on a more realistic strategy is welcome and long overdue.

Currently, three new data centers are slated to be built in New Mexico:

Oracle’s Project Jupiter in Santa Teresa with an investment of $165 billion.
Project Zenith slated to be built in Roswell amounts to a $11.7 billion investment.
New Era Energy & Digital, Inc. While the overall investment is unclear, the energy requirement is the largest of the three at 7 gigawatts (that’s seven times the power used by the City of San Francisco).

What is a data center? Basically, they are the real-world computing infrastructure that makes up the Internet. The rise of AI requires vast new computing power. It is critical that these facilities have uninterrupted electricity.

That electricity is going to be largely generated by traditional sources like natural gas and possibly nuclear. That contravenes New Mexico’s Energy Transition Act of 2019 which was adopted by this Gov. and many of the legislators still in office. Under the Act electrical power emissions are supposed to be eliminated in a few years.

With the amount of money being invested in these facilities and the simple fact that wind and solar and other “renewable” energy sources aren’t going to get the job done. In 2025 the Legislature passed and MLG signed HB 93 which allows for the creation of “microgrids” that won’t tax the grid and make our electricity more expensive, but the ETA will have to be amended or ignored to provide enough electricity for these data centers. There’s no other option.

New Mexicans have every right to wonder why powerful friends of the governor can set up their own natural gas microgrids while the rest of us face rising costs and decreased reliability from so-called “renewables.” Don’t get me wrong, having these data centers come to New Mexico is an economic boon.

But it comes tempered with massive subsidies including a 30-year property tax exemption and up to $165 billion in industrial revenue bonds. New Mexico is ideally suited as a destination for these data centers with its favorable climate and lack of natural disasters like hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods. We shouldn’t be giving away such massive subsidies.

Welcoming the data center boom to New Mexico better than rejecting them and pushing them to locate in other states. There is no way to avoid CO2 emissions whether they happen here or somewhere else. But, there are questions about both the electricity demand and subsidies that must be addressed as New Mexico’s data center boom begins.

What will the Legislature, radical environmental groups, and future governors of our state do to hinder (or help) bring these data centers to our State? That is an open question that depends heavily on upcoming statewide elections. It is important that New Mexicans understand and appreciate these complicated issues.

Paul Gessing is president of New Mexico’s Rio Grande Foundation. The Rio Grande Foundation is an independent, nonpartisan, tax-exempt research and educational organization dedicated to promoting prosperity for New Mexico based on principles of limited government, economic freedom and individual responsibility

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New Mexico

New Mexico maintains full childhood vaccine recommendations despite HHS rollback

Published

22 hours ago

January 7, 2026

Press Room

New Mexico maintains full childhood vaccine recommendations despite HHS rollback

SANTA FE, N.M. (KFOX14/CBS4) – The New Mexico Department of Health says it will continue to recommend the full schedule of childhood vaccines.

State officials announced the move Tuesday, directly defying a new federal policy that scaled back routine immunization guidance.

The announcement comes after U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS), under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., reduced the number of vaccines it recommends for all children.

The New Mexico Department of Health stated the federal changes were “not based on new scientific evidence or safety data.”

“New Mexico will not follow the federal government in walking away from decades of proven public health practice,” said Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham. “Our recommendations remain unchanged.”

State health officials sought to reassure parents, emphasizing that vaccines remain widely available and covered by insurance.

“We know this is confusing for parents, but the science is clear: vaccines are safe, effective, and save children’s lives,” said Dr. Miranda Durham, chief medical officer for NMDOH.

All childhood vaccinations will continue to be covered under programs like Medicaid and the federal Vaccines for Children Program.

The state encourages parents to consult their healthcare providers using the American Academy of Pediatrics’ immunization schedule.

RECOMMENDED: CDC cuts childhood vaccine list, sparking healthcare professionals’ concerns

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