Legal Juice

Let's just say that Canadian doctor Martin Gillen is in a class by himself - hopefully. As reported by the Ottawa Citizen:

[Gillen's boss] said [he] was upfront with him about a 2001 incident in which he was caught masturbating as a drugged female patient lay on his examining table.

Egad. Maybe he was "upfront" about the incident BECAUSE IT'S ON FILM! As a result of the incident, Dr. Gillen lost his license and ...

The former pain specialist was convicted of sexual assault and spent six months in jail for that crime. He will remain on the provincial sex offender registry until 2017.

Now he's trying to get his license back, but ...

Upon questioning, however, [Gillen's boss] learned Wednesday Gillen neglected to tell him the full extent of similar allegations that resulted in a nine-month suspension in 1989.

Doh! Regarding the 1989 incident...

Although he was found not guilty of criminal charges, a judge ruled "there was ample evidence to justify the finding of guilt by the (College's) Discipline Committee."

The hearing is continuing. You can read more (a lot) and see a photo of Mr. Gillen here.

Perhaps this doctor was absent when they discussed the "doctor/patient relationship" in medical school. If the evidence that led to his "summary suspension" holds up when there is a full-blown hearing, it's goodbye "Dr. Perry," and hello "Mr. Perry." As set forth in the "Order of Suspension" issued 2 days ago by the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners:

Evidence was presented to the Board that [Dr. Larry E. Perry, while in the examination room with a female patient, exposed his penis and urged the patient to perform oral sex on him. The patient refused to do so initially, and then offered to do so if [Dr. Perry] would increase the amount of Xanax that he was prescribing for her. [Dr. Perry] agreed to increase the patient's Xanax dosage from twice a day to three times a day and the patient then performed oral sex on [Dr. Perry].

And if that's not enough ...

Evidence was also presented that [Dr. Perry], while in the examination room with another female patient, began kissing the patient and forced her to place her hand on his erect penis. [Dr. Perry] tried to make the patient touch his penis three times and the patient repeatedly jerked her hand away.

And if that's not enough ...

Evidence was further presented that [Dr. Perry], on at least four (4) occasions, would approach female patients in the examination room by rolling close to the patient on his stool, spreading his legs, and would then rub his genitals on the patient's leg.

Based on the evidence presented ...

...the Board hereby finds that the conduct of Larry E. Perry, M.D. is so severe that it imperatively requires emergency action in order to protect the public health, safety and welfare prior to the initiation of formal disciplinary charges.

So he was suspended, effective upon his receipt of the Board's Order, which you can view by clicking here.

So, what would you do for a $16,000 Rolex watch? According to the children of retired Manteca Police lieutenant Jerry Kubena, Dr. Cleveland Enmon [formerly] of St. Joseph's Medical Center in Stockton, California, let their father die so he could take his Rolex. To read more(a LOT) and to see photos and a video, click here for the story in The Record.

Not only did this doctor have sex with his patient ... he did so in his office, weekly, and at least one of those times ... her husband was in the waiting room! Per metro.co.uk:

A doctor 'nearly fell off the couch' when a patient told him her husband was in a surgery waiting room outside while they had sex, a disciplinary panel heard.

Dr Michael Rusling indulged in regular sex sessions with the grandmother, the General Medical Council heard. Known as Patient A, the grandmother enjoyed weekly liaisons with him in a seven-month affair at the Sydenham House Group Practice in Hull in 2006-07.

Dr Rusling, of Beverley in East Yorkshire, admits inappropriate conduct and an abuse of power but denies his fitness to practise is impaired. The hearing continues.

Dude. You really don't think your fitness to practice is impaired? One has to question the judgment of a doctor who doesn't question his judgment under these circumstances.

Timothy Paul Gatschet of Wichita, Kansas was not exactly a shining example of what a doctor should be. From The Hays Daily News:

[The Kansas State Board of Healing Arts] had taken away his license in 1993 for inappropriate conduct.

In 1996, he was convicted of three felony counts of attempted enticement of a child.

The board reinstated Gatschet's license in 1998, but limited his practice to geriatrics.

And finally ... ...

Gatschet ... was sentenced Monday in Ellis County court to three years and seven months in prison. He pleaded guilty in March to criminal use of an explosive device and attempted use of an explosive device.

And what about his physician's license, which appeared to be coated with teflon?

Gatschet gave [it] up in April rather than face disciplinary proceedings by the Kansas State Board of Healing Arts.

I was starting to wonder what a doctor has to do in Kansas to lose his license for good. Here's the source.

They must really need dermatologists in Edmonton. Either that or perhaps they make it a practice to coddle offending doctors. Dr. Paul Lubitz had sex with not one, not two, not three, but FOUR of his patients. Really, should this guy be practicing medicine? [No!] He is, after serving an 18-month suspension. Here's the source.

And check out this comment from a website with consumer comments on health care providers [it's the 3/20/08 entry]:

I am a former staff member of Dr.Lubitz. I was terminated, along with all the other staff, when he "Fell ill". NONE of us were given our vacation pay or severance and were told we would have to sue if we wanted it! I can also tell you that he wrote the reviews on this page on 6/7/07 - the first listed one, and 6/6/07 - the positive review! I saw him do it. He is not a nice man, and always treated his staff horribly. He only cares about himself!

Zoinks!

I think it's safe to say that virtually everyone has heard the expression "doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground." With that in mind, here's an excerpt below from a Florida disciplinary case against Dr. G.K. Dwarka Nath:

37. The pathology report for the "colonoscopy" biopsy found benign squamous mucosa ... The finding was inconsistent with tissue from the rectum or colon, but consistent with tissue from the vagina. It became clear that Respondent had scoped the vagina and not the rectum.

Incredibly, he didn't even know that the scope was inserted in the wrong place! Sadly, the disciplinary complaint also describes the case of another patient who did not receive the appropriate care, and died. And what of Dr. Nath? He was fined $10,000 and put on supervised probation! Here's a link to the Final Order with the above language. There's another action on the disciplinary board's website (search "Nath") indicating that he was put on probation on 2/23/09, but that Order has not been posted.

Maybe I've seen too many "Nip/Tuck" commercials recently, but wouldn't you think that the plastic surgeon who specialized in breast enhancement would be the one who left his spouse and was asking for a divorce? Such was not the case with former New Hampshire doctor James Kartell. As reported by The Eagle-Tribune:

Vajda, a North Andover resident, was dating Kartell's estranged wife, Dr. Susan Kamm. She had moved in with Vajda and asked Kartell for a divorce.

Kartell had walked into Holy Family Hospital in Methuen on Feb. 23, 1999, with a loaded .38-caliber revolver and extra ammunition. Vajda was visiting Kamm, who was hospitalized with pneumonia.

The two men fought over who should leave, during which time Kartell shot Vajda in the stomach and then execution style in the head.

Kartell was convicted of manslaughter, and sentenced to 8 years in prison. He's out now and ...

He wants his license back! Really. He says he's innocent, claiming he acted in self-defense. But ...

... witnesses testified that the Andover doctor said, "Now, I'm going to get you" and shot Vajda close range.

Perhaps that's why his request to get his medical license back was rejected (he's appealing it). He's also still fighting his criminal conviction, after recently losing his third appeal. Time to find a new job, ya think? Click here to read more.

That's apparently the way Dr. Henry Kinch's mind works. Mrs. B and her husband, Mr. B, were his patients for many years. Oh, and Dr. Kinch prescribed anti-depressants to Mr. B without seeing him. I'm sure you know where this is going ...

Yes, you guessed it, Dr. Kinch (married) and Mrs. B (married 20 years, with kids) are in love and have been engaged in an affair. As reported by The Telegraph, when Mr. B confronted his wife, she said "that she was "maybe" having an affair with the doctor." Um, it's a "yes" or "no" question. Was Dr. Kinch any more forthcoming? Per Mr. B:

"He was very calm. He replied, basically, 'Me and your wife love each other. We can't help how we feel. I'm sorry but that's how we feel and we are going to live together'.

"I then said, 'How can you do this? You're breaking up my family, and my children, a 20 year marriage. You are my doctor, my wife's doctor and you will break up our marriage.'

'Do you remember how you felt when you first met your wife and fell in love?' I said, 'Yes. Of course.' He said 'That's what I have now. I can't help the way I feel.'

So, we have a doctor sneaking around committing adultery, with a patient, who is also an employee, and improperly prescribing drugs to her husband [also a patient] and everything is just peachy keen. Have you no shame sir? [rhetorical question, of course]. Dr. Kinch's dirty laundry is now being aired at a disciplinary hearing before the General Medical Counsel. Here's hoping they are harder on him than he is on himself. To read more, click here.

If you or I ever try to pull the shit that Tennessee doctor Robert E. Grindstaff admitted to doing, fuhgeddaboudit. While he was in the hospital, here's what went down, per The Kingsport Times-News:

[from August 3 through September 8] unlicensed personnel at Grindstaff’s Pinecrest Family Practice in Johnson City treated 115 patients by evaluating and questioning them about their needs and calling in refills for prescriptions without consulting a physician.

... during those dates If the patient required a Schedule II controlled substance, a member of Grindstaff’s staff took a note to Grindstaff to have him sign the prescription without his review of the patient’s records.

During the same time period, Grindstaff’s office billed patients for nursing visits despite the fact the doctor was not in the office and there are no nurses or staff members at the practice “with any formal training or experience in any medically related field.”

Really serious shit, right? Apparently not. Dr. Grindstaff did not even have his medical license suspended!

The board placed Grindstaff’s license on probationary status for two years, during which he must complete an educational seminar on prescribing controlled drugs, a comprehensive physician assessment, and a clinical education program.

The board further ordered Grindstaff to pay up to $1,000 of the cost of the health department’s prosecution of his case.

Excuse me, but la-di-fucking-da! This punishment was imposed notwithstanding that ...

According to the board, Grindstaff’s actions violated both state statutes and medical practice acts governing gross malpractice, unprofessional conduct, prescribing and dispensing drugs, and medical record keeping.

Please, tell me it's not just me. Absent some incredible mitigating factors, this guy should have had his license revoked.

I immediately thought of "Fight Club" when I read this story. As reported by Forbes.com:

For a time, Beverly Hills doctor Craig Alan Bittner turned the fat he removed from patients into biodiesel that fueled his Ford SUV and his girlfriend's Lincoln Navigator.

Quoting Fawn Leibowitz's "Animal House" friends, "Ewwwwww!" But is it legal?

Using fat to fuel cars might be environmentally friendly, but it's definitely illegal in California to use human medical waste to power vehicles, and Bittner is being investigated by the state's public health department.

To read more (a fair amount) click here. (One guess - What is the main ingredient in the soap in "Fight Club"?)

Continue reading "Doctor Used WHAT To Power His Car?" »

Surgery is scary enough. I'd like to know that my doctor is certain that operating while on crack would be a bad thing. It's not that California ear, nose and throat specialist Li Quang Nguyen actually operated while on crack, but check this out, as reported by the OC Register:

In July 2007, Dr. Nguyen was staying at the Howard Johnson Express in Huntington Beach. Police responded to a call that maids could not enter the locked room for cleaning. Police found Nguyen in a deep sleep. Police removed rock cocaine, a clear vial of liquid cocaine, a glass pipe and a lighter, the documents say.

Hard to say "what crack" in those circumstances, right?

Nguyen admitted to police that he had freebased cocaine the day before but said he was not "hooked," according to the documents. In April, he pleaded no contest to drug charges and was ordered to enter an 18-month treatment program.

Okay. Looking good, until the disciplinary hearing for his medical license...

... during his hearing, Nguyen said he knew nothing about the drugs and "went so far as to testify that he did not know if it would be dangerous to perform surgery under the influence of cocaine."

The board's disciplinary documents say, "He claimed he could not know if this would be dangerous since he had never tried it, but such an assertion made by a trained physician is simply preposterous and rather frightening."

What, what, what? Dr. Nguyen, who had a previous disciplinary action, had his license revoked. To read more, click here.

Perhaps this is the case with trauma doctor Martin Derusha, Jr. of Fort Worth, Texas. As to the doctoring, as reported in The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, per Mr. Derusha,

"At this point in my career, I have no malpractice (claims), no problems at all in medicine."

Maybe in medicine, but ...

Derusha was arrested in 1998 for driving while intoxicated in Navarro County.

In 2003, he was arrested in Tarrant County for his second DWI, pleaded guilty and was fined $700 and sentenced to 30 days in jail, according to state documents.

Derusha was arrested again in 2006 for a DWI in Parker County.

The medical board again placed him on a 10-year probation. On Jan. 27, he was arrested in Tarrant County for a fourth DWI, according to board documents.

So what happened?

Derusha said in an interview he voluntarily gave up his license, though the matter was under appeal. "At this point I don’t have the money to argue with them," he said. "How many battles can you fight at one time?"

Here's the source.

It's often not pretty when relationships end. But what would these doctors do about the dog they both wanted? From the Bangkok Post:

A woman doctor shot at her boyfriend, who was also a doctor at the same hospital in Ubon Ratchathani province, after he refused to let her take care of their dog after the couple broke up.

Fortunately, the shots missed Supachoke Buddhacharoenlarp and hit his Jeep Cherokee instead. Dr Supachoke told police that he and Napawan Choppradit, 29, had been together for some time, but had decided to separate.

On Thursday, they met to settle matters, but could not agree on who would take care of the dog.

"Dr Napawan wanted to take the dog, but I refused. After arguing for a while, I got in the car, where the dog was being kept. She was angry and shot at us two times," he said. Dr Napawan has been charged with attempted murder.

Attempted murder! Sweet fancy Moses! I'm thinking this won't help her in canine custody court ...

An obstetrician named Roman Hasil has amassed quite a record, both on and off the job. As reported by The Courier:

Dr Hasil committed one of the drink-driving offences, on February 6 at McGraths Hill, just weeks before he was suspended by the NSW Medical Board after a damning report into several botched operations he had performed in New Zealand. He is under investigation in NSW over at least 10 serious patient complaints from his time at Lismore Base Hospital from 2001 to 2005.

There's plenty more:

Media reports in Slovakia last week also alleged that he drank on the job at two hospitals there as far back as the 1980s. [the 80s!]

Sally Hasil, who was married to Dr Hasil for 12 years, alleged that he was sacked from the Royal Hobart Hospital in March 1997 for not turning up to work because he was drunk but was rehired in November 1997.

Yesterday his ex-girlfriend, Sally Hock, who lived with him in Ebenezer, near Windsor, between January and June this year said that he frequently disappeared for days on drinking binges.

In May 2005 he was sacked from Melbourne's Angliss Hospital for drinking while on call.

In July he was sentenced to a 12-month good behaviour bond for obtaining money by deception after leaving without paying a $40.30 bill at a Chinese restaurant for a meal and a bottle of wine. He was also sentenced for assaulting a woman in Windsor the same day as the restaurant incident.

He had already been sentenced to a year's disqualification from driving and fined $250 in the Penrith District Court, on September 8, for high-range drink driving at McGraths Hill.

NSW court documents show that Dr Hasil was sentenced on September 29 in the Downing Centre Local Court for high-range drink driving in Cardiff in June and disqualified from driving for three years and put on a two-year good behaviour bond.

Whew. I'm out of breath! Here's the source.

You might know the rest of the saying ("so shall ye reap"), and so might Pennsylvania dentist Thomas McFarland, Jr., but he paid it no heed. The "sewing" in this case was the dumping of about 300 used needles [and other medical waste] into the ocean, which washed up on the beach in Avalon, New Jersey - where McFarland owns a vacation home!

How did the authorities figure out it was McFarland? As reported in The Press of Atlantic City:

... using identifying codes on the medical debris, [investigators] zeroed in on a small number of dental practices where the debris could have originated... McFarland's was one of them.

The reaping?

McFarland was charged with two third-degree felonies [unlawful disposal of regulated medical waste and unlawful discharge of a pollutant] that each carries a possible prison term of five years and a total of $125,000 in fines, [State Attorney General Anne] Milgram said.

To read more (a fair amount) click here.

Despite having examined the patient several times in 2002 and 2003, the doctor failed to notice that his patient had a 32 pound cyst! What did he tell her? Per the Otago [New Zealand] Daily Times online, that ...

...she was overweight and prescribed weight-loss pills.

Wrong. Very wrong.

The woman, a 44-year-old mother of three, was eventually was taken to Christchurch Hospital in severe pain where the cyst was removed. The woman told The Press yesterday the cyst was cancerous and she needed an operation to remove her womb, ovaries and fallopian tubes.

What happened to the doctor?

[He] was found guilty of professional misconduct by the Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal in 2006. He was censured and fined $22,500 but his name was suppressed to protect his practice and family.

Wow. That's it? I agree with the victim:

"I've lost my insides, but he's still practising," she said.

She felt ill that the doctor continued to treat patients who were unaware of the misconduct finding. The patient called for a radical change from the health system so the names of medical professionals found guilty of professional misconduct were made public.

Here's the source.

Although you usually get what you pay for, that does not apply in this case. As reported by radio station CJAD:

A 34-year-old St Constant woman has taken her doctor before the College of Physicians disciplinary committee for her more than $5 000 breast augmentation which only lasted four days.

They weren't implants; Chantal Atkinson didn't want those. Instead, Verdun doctor Denis Bisson suggested a fat injection.

All went well, but over just four days, Atkinson watched as her breasts disappeared; The fat was reabsorbed into her body.

The fat transfer technique is not officially recognized by the College of Physicians, and its members are not allowed to perform it.

Bisson is facing a similar complaint from another woman. 44-year-old Manon Valade says her breasts "melted away like ice."

Snap! 5,000 clams, a procedure that couldn't have been pleasant, and nothing to show for it, except some fat where she didn't want it! Here's the source.

All doctors know that it is unethical, at a minimum, to have a sexual relationship with a patient. And that, at a minimum, there is an appearance of impropriety when a boss has a sexual relationship with a subordinate. Well, as reported by Radio New Zealand, a family doctor in New Zealand had a sexual relationship with a patient, who also worked for him. (I'd wager that he's married too.) As you would expect, he's facing disciplinary proceedings. Here's the source.

You would not believe the frequency with which doctors sexually abuse their patients. In doing research for these posts, I come across cases similar to this at least several times each week.

According to a woman examined by Arkansas Dr. Clarence Jay Arendall, here's what happened, as reported by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette:

[The woman] said in the lawsuit filed March 12 that she visited Arendall for an ear infection in the past five years but that during the examination, he lowered her pants, touched her genitals, fondled her breasts and made sexual comments to her.

The suit also claims that Arendall made her addicted to pain pills. He prescribed the pain pills to her and had her pick them up each week at his office after hours, and continued to increase her prescription until she was taking 240 pills a week, the suit states.

The woman experienced seven seizures, of which Arendall was aware. And he knew that the pain medication was associated with seizures but continued to increase the dosage, the suit states.

He also threatened to have her husband fired from his job if the woman told anyone about his conduct, according to the lawsuit.

Maybe these are just baseless allegations? Unlikely. Consider this: The prosecutor said that

Alma Police Chief Russell White told him last week that investigators had received complaints from 15 to 20 women who claimed to have been sexually abused by Arendall.

Dr. Arundell has been charged with second-degree sexual abuse, and is being investigated regarding the additional 15-20 complaints received by the police. And his medical license was suspended pending the outcome of a disciplinary hearing. You can read more here.