The motive for the alleged data manipulation is unknown.
The Chronicle notes that Memorial Hermann has seen increasing numbers of liver transplant candidates die or become too sick for a transplant while on the waitlist. According to federal data, in 2021, only four patients died or got too sick for a transplant while on the hospital’s liver transplant waiting list. In 2022, the number increased to 11, and in 2023, it was 14. So far this year, there are five patients who have died or gotten too sick while waiting.
Strange didn’t prevent individuals from getting surgery; he just elected to not perform surgeries himself for which A: he believed he could not fix the underlying issue, or B: the surgery could be performed successfully by someone less specialized. Strange isn’t evil, he just knew that maximizing the amount of impact he could have on the world required him to prioritize patients that needed his exceptional skills (and were fixable). Whether you think he did this to inflate his record or from the goodness of his heart is up for debate, but those patients received care if they were fixable (Pangborn likely was legitimately unfixable by conventional methods).
This guy’s actions, on the other hand, actually caused the patients to be declared ineligible on the provider’s systems, thereby denying them from receiving the procedures at all.