The Massachusetts State Board of Registration in Medicine has suspended a physician who left a patient on the operating room table while he visited a local bank. On July 10, Dr. David C. Arndt, an orthopedic surgeon and 1992 graduate of Harvard Medical School, was performing back surgery on a patient at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge when he notified the operating room staff that he was taking a short break and would return in five minutes.

According to Arndt, he was undergoing a "financial crisis" and had to deposit his paycheck before the bank closed. He returned thirty minutes later and completed the operation successfully. In suspending Arndt's license, the State Board said that the surgeon was a "threat to the health, safety and welfare of the public."