I-Team Follow-Up: False Hope
Reporting
Jim Osman
PHILADELPHIA (CBS 3) ― There are major developments in the wake of CBS 3 I-Team Investigation of a local woman who calls herself a doctor.

We recently learned that Dr. Patricia Kane, who is not a medical doctor but treated patients at the Haverford Wellness Center, no longer works at the facility in Havertown.

Earlier this year, the I-Team started investigating Kane after uncovering stories from patients like Jeff Repetto, a California man, who spent $50,000 on Kane's treatments.

Repetto says Kane, who claims to hold a PhD, told him that he didn't have ALS which is also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

ALS is a terminal illness which ravages the muscles. He says Kane told him he simply had a build up of toxins. His disease continues to progress and today he can no longer speak.

Janine Schiller, a Bucks County woman, who was diagnosed with ALS by doctors, told us a similar story.

In April, Janine, who struggled to speak to us because of her progressing disease, described how Kane took thousands of dollars from her for treatments. She said Kane told her that she wasn't dying.

On August 29th, Janine, a wife and mother of three, died from complications of ALS.

"I think that's one of things that is so stark now, is that Janine was so alive and so vivacious and this house is so empty," said her husband Tim. "You know there's a big hole here."

Janine didn't live long enough to hear the news that her husband says would have put a smile on her face. The news that Kane is no longer working at the Haverford Wellness Center.

After repeated requests for an interview that were denied by Kane, we recently met Dr. Domenick Braccia on the way out of the Haverford Wellness Center where Kane saw patients.

Dr. Braccia is the medical director at the Haverford Wellness Center who has also denied our repeated requests for an interview.

When we caught up with Dr. Braccia as he left the center, we asked him for his reaction to Kane's statements telling patients with the terminal disease that they were not dying.

"That is unfounded, that doesn't happen," said Braccia as he walked to his car.

As the center's medical director, Dr. Braccia has known for months about the I-Team investigation and the subsequent inquiry by the Pennsylvania Medical Board. Even so, he repeatedly refused our requests for an interview.

And he refused again to respond on the day we showed up to press for answers.

This week, the CBS 3 I-Team learned that Patricia Kane's biography and picture were pulled from the Haverford Wellness Center's website.

She no longer has a job there.

"Janine would've been so pleased, she didn't want anyone else taken advantage of like we had been," said her husband days after he laid his wife to rest.

Since our investigation began, Kane has refused to provide us with her credentials and did not connect us with the clients she says have benefitted from her treatments for ALS.

It is not clear whether Kane was fired or resigned.

A lawyer for the Haverford Wellness Center would only tell us that Kane is no longer associated with the center and had no further comment.

http://cbs3.com/investigations/i.tea....2.814584.html