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Showing posts with label State Board of Medicine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label State Board of Medicine. Show all posts

Thursday, November 21, 2019

Memphis psychiatrist who used riding crop on patients now faces new charges

Brett Kelman
Nashville Tennessean
Originally published October 27, 2019

Here are two excerpts:

A Memphis-area psychiatrist whose license was suspended last year for using a riding crop on patients could now lose her license again due to an ongoing dispute with state health licensing officials.

Dr. Valerie Augustus, who runs Christian Psychiatric Services in the suburb of Germantown, was forced to close her clinic last June after a medical discipline trial proved to the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners that she had used a riding crop or a whip on at least 10 patients. The clinic was permitted to re-open six months later after Augustus agreed to professional probation, but she continued to fight the case in court.

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Augustus, 57, ran her clinic for 17 years without any discipline issues before her license was suspended last year. A board order states that, in addition to using the whip and riding crop on patients, Augustus kept the items “displayed in her office” and “compared her patients to mules.”

The government’s attorney, Paetria Morgan, argued at the medical discipline trial that Augustus hit her patients if they did not lose weight or exercise. In addition to the whip and riding crop, Morgan alleged Augustus hit patients with a “four-foot stick of bamboo.”

“Her defense is that she hit them in jest,” Morgan said. “When did hitting become funny? Hitting isn’t hilarious. Hitting isn’t helpful. Hitting isn’t healing.”

The info is here.

Monday, September 16, 2019

Sex misconduct claims up 62% against California doctors

Vandana Ravikumar
USAToday.com
Originally posted August 12, 2019

The number of complaints against California physicians for sexual misconduct has risen by 62% since the fall of 2017, according to a Los Angeles Times investigation.

The investigation, published Monday, found that the rise in complaints coincides with the beginning of the #MeToo movement, which encouraged victims of sexual misconduct or assault to speak out about their experiences. Though complaints of sexual misconduct against physicians are small in number, they are among the fastest growing types of allegations.

Recent high-profile incidents of sexual misconduct involving medical professionals were also a catalyst, the Times reported. Those cases include the abuses of Larry Nassar, a former USA Gymnastics doctor who was sentenced in 2018 for 40-175 years in prison for molesting hundreds of young athletes.

That same year, hundreds of women accused former University of Southern California gynecologist George Tyndall of inappropriate behavior. Tyndall, who worked at the university for nearly three decades, was recently charged for sexually assaulting 16 women.

The info is here.

Sunday, December 31, 2017

VA knowingly hires doctors with past malpractice claims, discipline for poor care

Donovan Slack
USA Today
Originally published December 3, 2017

Here is an excerpt:

A VA hospital in Oklahoma knowingly hired a psychiatrist previously sanctioned for sexual misconduct who went on to sleep with a VA patient, according to internal documents. A Louisiana VA clinic hired a psychologist with felony convictions. The VA ended up firing him after they determined he was a “direct threat to others” and the VA’s mission.

As a result of USA TODAY’s investigation of Schneider, VA officials determined his hiring — and potentially that of an unknown number of other doctors — was illegal.

Federal law bars the agency from hiring physicians whose license has been revoked by a state board, even if they still hold an active license in another state. Schneider still has a license in Montana, even though his Wyoming license was revoked.

VA spokesman Curt Cashour said agency officials provided hospital officials in Iowa City with “incorrect guidance” green-lighting Schneider’s hire. The VA moved to fire Schneider last Wednesday. He resigned instead.

The article is here.

Tuesday, November 7, 2017

Inside a Secretive Group Where Women Are Branded

Barry Meier
The New York Times
Originally published October 17, 2017

Here are two excerpts:

Both Nxivm and Mr. Raniere, 57, have long attracted controversy. Former members have depicted him as a man who manipulated his adherents, had sex with them and urged women to follow near-starvation diets to achieve the type of physique he found appealing.

Now, as talk about the secret sisterhood and branding has circulated within Nxivm, scores of members are leaving. Interviews with a dozen of them portray a group spinning more deeply into disturbing practices. Many members said they feared that confessions about indiscretions would be used to blackmail them.

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In July, Ms. Edmondson filed a complaint with the New York State Department of Health against Danielle Roberts, a licensed osteopath and follower of Mr. Raniere, who performed the branding, according to Ms. Edmondson and another woman. In a letter, the agency said it would not look into Dr. Roberts because she was not acting as Ms. Edmondson’s doctor when the branding is said to have happened.

Separately, a state police investigator told Ms. Edmondson and two other women that officials would not pursue their criminal complaint against Nxivm because their actions had been consensual, a text message shows.

State medical regulators also declined to act on a complaint filed against another Nxivm-affilated physician, Brandon Porter. Dr. Porter, as part of an “experiment,” showed women graphically violent film clips while a brain-wave machine and video camera recorded their reactions, according to two women who took part.

The women said they were not warned that some of the clips were violent, including footage of four women being murdered and dismembered.

“Please look into this ASAP,” a former Nxivm member, Jennifer Kobelt, stated in her complaint. “This man needs to be stopped.”

In September, regulators told Ms. Kobelt they concluded that the allegations against Dr. Porter did not meet the agency’s definition of “medical misconduct,” their letter shows.

The article is here.

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Physician licensing laws keep doctors from seeking care

Bab Nellis
Mayo Clinic New Network

Despite growing problems with psychological distress, many physicians avoid seeking mental health treatment due to concern for their license. Mayo Clinic research shows that licensing requirements in many states include questions about past mental health treatments or diagnoses, with the implication that they may limit a doctor's right to practice medicine. The findings appear today in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

“Clearly, in some states, the questions physicians are required to answer to obtain or renew their license are keeping them from seeking the help they need to recover from burnout and other  emotional or mental health issues,” says Liselotte Dyrbye, M.D., a Mayo Clinic physician and first author of the article.

The researchers examined the licensing documents for physicians in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., and renewal applications from 48 states. They also collected data in a national survey of more than 5,800 physicians, including attitudes about seeking mental health care.

Nearly 40 percent of respondents said they would hesitate in seeking professional help for a mental health condition because they feared doing so could have negative impacts on their medical license.

The article is here.

The target article is here.

Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Why doctors are leery about seeking mental health care for themselves

By Nathaniel P. Morris
The Washington Post
Originally published January 7, 2016

A survey of 2,000 U.S. physicians released in September found that roughly half believed they had met criteria for a mental health disorder in the past but had not sought treatment. The doctors listed a number of reasons they had shunned care, including worries that they’d be stigmatized and an inability to find the time.

But they also voiced a troubling reason for avoiding treatment: medical licensing applications.

After graduating from medical school, doctors must complete residency training and apply for state medical licenses to practice medicine. According to a study that appeared in 2008, about 90 percent of state medical boards have licensing forms that include questions about an applicant’s mental health.

Such questions are intended to protect the public, based on the idea that impaired or distressed physicians could endanger patients. A physician having hallucinations, for example, might not be able to focus or practice safely.

The article is here.

Friday, December 16, 2016

How a doctor convicted in drugs-for-sex case returned to practice

Danny Robbins
Atlantic Journal Constitution
Part of a series on Physical and Sexual Abuse

Here is an excerpt:

“The pimp with a prescription pad” is what one prosecutor called him during a trial in which it was revealed that more than 400 sexually explicit photos of female patients and other women had been discovered in his office.

In some states, where legislatures have enacted laws prohibiting doctors who commit certain crimes from practicing, Dekle’s career would be over. But in Georgia, where the law gives the medical board the discretion to license anyone it sees fit, he was back in practice two years after leaving prison.

More than a dozen years later, that decision still leads some to wonder what the board was thinking.

“It’s particularly damning that he was using his ability to write prescriptions to further his sexual activities,” said Chris Dorsey, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent who led the probe that sent Dekle to prison. “A doctor burglarizes a house and then pays his debt to society, could he be a good doctor? I could argue it both ways. But when you have someone who abused everything centering on a medical practice to victimize all these people, that’s really a separate issue.”

The article is here.

Thursday, December 15, 2016

How Well Does Your State Protect Patients?

By Carrie Teegardin
Atlantic Journal-Constitution
A series on Physicians and Abuse

Here is an excerpt:

In most states, doctors dominate medical licensing boards and have the authority to decide who is fit to practice medicine and who isn’t. Usually the laws do not restrict a board’s authority by mandating certain punishments for some types of violations. Many licensing boards — including Georgia’s — say that’s how it should be.

“Having a bold, bright line saying a felony equals this or that is not good policy,” said Bob Jeffery, executive director of the Georgia Composite Medical Board.

Jeffery said criminal courts punish offenders and civil courts can compensate victims. Medical regulators, he said, have a different role.

“A licensing board is charged with making sure a (doctor) is safe to practice and that patients are protected,” he said.

With no legal prohibition standing in the way in most states, doctor-dominated medical boards often decide that doctors busted for abusive or illegal behaviors can be rehabilitated and safely returned to exam rooms.

New Jersey licensed a doctor convicted of sexual offenses with four patients. Kansas licensed a doctor imprisoned in Ohio for a sexual offense involving a child; that doctor later lost his Kansas license after making anonymous obscene phone calls to patients. Utah licensed a doctor who didn’t contest misdemeanor charges of sexual battery for intentionally touching the genitals of patients, staff members and others.

The article is here.

Wednesday, August 10, 2016

Fool Me Twice, Shame on You; Fool Me Three Times, I’m a Medical Board

by David Epstein
ProPublica
Originally published July 15, 2016

Here is an excerpt:

The Journal-Constitution analyzed public records from every single state. The low-bar-good-news is that “the vast majority of the nation’s 900,000 licensed physicians don’t sexually abuse patients.” Hurrah. The bad news is that the AJC couldn’t determine the extent of the problem due to reporting practices that give as much information as a teenager asked about his day at school. Except minus “fine.”

What else?

Some cases were truly egregious, particularly when “hospitals … fail to report sexual misconduct to regulators, despite laws in most states requiring them to do so.” For example: the AJC reported that one doctor was fired by three Tennessee hospitals (twice for sexual misconduct), but incurred no medical board actions.

The information is here.

Saturday, July 30, 2016

Sexual abuse by doctors sometimes goes unpunished

Associated Press
Originally published July 6, 2016

Sexual abuse by doctors against patients is surprisingly widespread, yet the fragmented medical oversight system shrouds offenders' actions in secrecy and allows many to continue to treat patients, an investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has found.

The AJC obtained and analyzed more than 100,000 disciplinary orders against doctors since 1999. Among those, the newspaper identified more than 3,100 doctors sanctioned after being accused of sexual misconduct. More than 2,400 of the doctors had violations involving patients. Of those, half still have active medical licenses today, the newspaper found.

These cases represent only a fraction of incidences in which doctors have been accused of sexually abusing patients. Many remain obscured, the newspaper said, because state regulators and hospitals sometimes handle sexual misconduct cases in secret. Also, some public records are so vaguely worded that patients would not be aware that a sexual offense occurred.

The article is here.

Saturday, September 19, 2015

When Bad Doctors Happen to Good Patients

By Thomas Moore and Steve Cohen
The New York Times
Originally published August 31, 2015

Here is an excerpt:

That Lavern’s Law wasn’t allowed to come up for a final vote is Albany’s shame. The greater shame is that hospitals don’t put more emphasis on patient safety. As the Lavern’s Law travesty makes clear, we need better solutions. Don’t limit what injured people may collect, and don’t make it more difficult for victims to get their cases heard. Even better for all concerned, keep the negligent act from ever happening in the first place. And there are practical ways to do that.

Doctors and hospitals must do a better job of policing themselves. Six percent of all doctors were estimated to be responsible for 58 percent of all malpractice payments between 1991 and 2005. State licensing agencies must do a much better job of keeping those worst of the worst out of hospitals. The threshold for state medical licensing agencies to initiate reviews should be reduced; in New York it takes six malpractice judgments or settlements. It should be three at most.

The entire article is here.

Monday, May 4, 2015

Informed Consent and the First Amendment

Wendy K. Mariner, and George J. Annas
N Engl J Med 2015; 372:1285-1287
April 2, 2015
DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp1501190

Here is an excerpt:

Medical services are analogous to commercial practices for purposes of the First Amendment. The government has an interest in regulating medical practice to ensure safe and effective care. It also has an interest in ensuring that patients have enough accurate information to make voluntary, informed treatment decisions. Hence, it is the physician's duty under the doctrine of informed consent to provide material information about the benefits and risks of both the recommended treatment and its alternatives. However, the First Amendment prohibits the government from compelling people to make false or misleading statements or to express the government's point of view as their own.

Relying on the 1992 Supreme Court decision, North Carolina contended that the required fetal sonogram descriptions are merely statements of fact. The Fourth Circuit, however, found that North Carolina's display provision represented “quintessential compelled speech,” calling the required description “ideological; it conveys a particular opinion.” The court, finding that the “state's avowed intent and the anticipated effect” were to discourage abortion, said that the provision compelled physicians to serve as a mouthpiece for the state's point of view.

The entire article is here.

Friday, September 6, 2013

Dangerous Doctors Allowed to Keep Practicing

By Peter Eisler and Barbara Hansen
USA Today
Originally published August 20, 2013

Here is an excerpt:

Despite years of criticism, the nation's state medical boards continue to allow thousands of physicians to keep practicing medicine after findings of serious misconduct that puts patients at risk, a USA TODAY investigation shows. Many of the doctors have been barred by hospitals or other medical facilities; hundreds have paid millions of dollars to resolve malpractice claims. Yet their medical licenses — and their ability to inflict harm — remain intact.

The problem isn't universal. Some state boards have responded to complaints and become more transparent and aggressive in policing bad doctors.

But state and federal records still paint a grim picture of a physician oversight system that often is slow to act, quick to excuse problems, and struggling to manage workloads in an era of tight state budgets.

USA TODAY reviewed records from multiple sources, including the public file of the National Practitioner Data Bank, a federal repository set up to help medical boards track physicians' license records, malpractice payments, and disciplinary actions imposed by hospitals, HMOs and other institutions that manage doctors. By law, reports must be filed with the Data Bank when any of the nation's 878,000 licensed doctors face "adverse actions" — and the reports are intended to be monitored closely by medical boards.

The entire narrative and video story is here.

Monday, August 27, 2012

FTC decision jeopardizes authority of medical boards, doctors say

By Alicia Gallegos
amednews.com
Originally published August 20, 2012

Physicians are urging a U.S. appeals court to overturn a Federal Trade Commission ruling that doctors say strips medical boards of their right to regulate medicine.

The appeal comes after a North Carolina dental board was found to have violated federal antitrust regulations by attempting to stop nondentists from operating teeth-whitening centers. The FTC said the board is not exempt from antitrust scrutiny because its members are private professionals who compete with others in the marketplace.

If the FTC decision stands, the ruling would significantly imperil state regulation of medicine and put the public’s health at risk, doctors said.

“It would be disruptive to the proper regulation of medicine nationwide,” said Stephen Keene, general counsel for the North Carolina Medical Society. “The notion of having government agency bureaucrats regulate a learned profession is not good for the public. There would be no meaningful oversight of practitioners to deliver safe medicine.”

The entire story is here.

Saturday, August 4, 2012

Colorado Shooting Suspect Was Getting Psychiatric Care

By Dan Frosch
The New York Times
Originally published July 27, 2012

James E. Holmes, the Colorado man accused of gunning down 12 people at an Aurora movie theater last week, was being treated by a psychiatrist whose research interests include psychotherapy and the neurobiology of schizophrenia, according to court papers filed by Mr. Holmes’s lawyers on Thursday, the first documented glimpse into his mental health condition.

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According to the court papers, Mr. Holmes had sent a package to Dr. Fenton, which was ultimately seized by the police after a search warrant was executed on Monday.

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In September 2004, Dr. Fenton received an admonition from Colorado’s board of medical examiners for prescribing medications — including the allergy medication Claritin, the sleeping pill Ambien, two tranquilizers and the narcotic painkiller Vicodin — for a few colleagues and her husband on several occasions, and failing to keep proper documentation of the prescriptions. The board noted in its admonition letter that Dr. Fenton was no longer writing prescriptions for people who were not her patients.

The entire story is here.

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Texas Physician Pleads Guilty in Whistle-Blowing Nurses Case

By Robert Lowes
Medscape News Today

Rolando Arafiles Jr, MD, today pled guilty to criminal charges in a state court in Winkler County, Texas, for retaliating against 2 nurses who had anonymously reported him in 2009 to the Texas Medical Board (TMB) over the quality of his patient care.

Anne Mitchell, RN and Vickilyn Galle RN

The case set off a national conversation on the protection afforded healthcare whistle-blowers.

The 2 nurses, Anne Mitchell, RN, and Vickilyn Galle, RN, had worked with Dr. Arafiles at Winkler County Memorial Hospital in Kermit, Texas. Once they were identified as the whistle-blowers by a county investigation that Dr. Arafiles instigated, the nurses were charged with misuse of official information, which is a third-degree felony, and fired. The charge against Galle was dropped, and a jury last year quickly found Mitchell not guilty.

Today, the 59-year-old Dr. Arafiles pled guilty to 1 count each of misuse of official information and retaliation, which is also a third-degree felony. He was sentenced to 60 days in jail and fined $5000. A press release issued by the office of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott stated that with today's plea, Dr. Arafiles admits to urging former Winkler County Sheriff Robert Roberts Jr and former Winkler County Attorney Scott Tidwell to strike back against the nurses.

On November 4, he signed an order with the TMB to voluntarily surrender his state medical license effective November 11. He faced the possibility of the board revoking his license on account of a felony conviction.

The entire story is here.

Saturday, October 1, 2011

Maryland State Board of Physicians v. Eist

Patient Privacy vs. Disciplining Doctors

By Jonathan E. Montgomery
Originally published June 21, 2011

This January, Maryland's highest court ruled in Board of Physicians v. Eist, that health care practitioners must timely disclose patient medical records to Maryland's Board of Physicians pursuant to a Board subpoena, or face sanctions, even if the patient involved objects to the disclosure.

In this case, Dr. Eist, a psychiatrist, became the subject of a Board investigation after the estranged husband of one of his patients accused Dr. Eist of, among other things, overmedicating the patient. The Board demanded the patient's medical records, but Dr. Eist initially withheld the records when his patient refused to give consent to the disclosure. Dr. Eist believed that he should wait until the Board and his patient settled their privacy dispute.

The entire summary of the case can be found here.

The entire opinion can be read here.

One issue from this case stems from the psychiatrist’s choice of counsel.  Apparently, though a competent attorney, Dr. Eist’s lawyer did not seem to grasp fully how to proceed when dealing with Maryland's Board of Physicians.

One major benefit to being a PPA member is to subscribe to our Legal Consultation Plan.  For $150 per year, a member has access to three hours of time from an attorney who is also a psychologist and understands the workings of the Pennsylvania State Board of Psychology.