This is the quick and dirty of the various healthcare professionals who have gotten in trouble with the medical board. This is only for a few months in 2017, I thought it would be worthwhile to share.
Oakland, Ca: prescribing controlled substances to himself; charged with gross negligence; license revoked.
El Centro, Ca: repeated acts of negligence of 2 patients; must complete educational program and a clinical assessment exam.
Mountain Center, Ca: gross negligence, repeated mistakes in caring of one particular patient; license on probation for 3 years (can still practice) but must:
- complete relevant educational courses
- medical record keeping course
- get a practice monitor (a 3rd party?)
Bakersfield, Ca: unprofessional conduct(hanky panky?) with 2 patients; at first revoked but later changed to a 35 month probation; must take courses and get a practice monitor.
Long Beach, Ca: gross negligent care of one patient; inadequate record keeping; must:
- take medical record keeping course
- take a prescribing practice course (online?)
Oceanside, Ca: this guy hit the jackpot with:
- gross negligence
- excessive prescribing
- dispensing and prescribing dangerous meds (uhm, ASA?) without a prior exam
first revoked, then stayed, and finally down to a probation for 4 years!!
- cannot give narcotic meds
- needs to take a bunch of courses
- needs supervision to prescribe medical marijuana
Folsom, Ca: busted for being drunk on the job; punished, of course, what else would the board do with someone who has a medical disease called alcoholism!?
- 60 day suspension
- cannot used controlled substances
- complete an ethics course or two
- submit biologic fluid tests (semen right?)
- cannot practice solo medicine
- must get a work site monitor
- must attend AA
Encino, Ca: yea this dude fuuuuucked up:
- gross negligence
- repeated negligent acts
- prescribing without the appropriate exams
- excessive prescribing
- failure to maintain accurate records
- prescribing to addicts
gets 4 years probation, cannot prescribe controlled medication; get this, cannot practice solo except for care of 3 patients (?!)
Chino Hills, Ca: gross negligence, failing to diagnose a patient with sepsis;public reprimand, no suspension (wonder if outpatient or inpatient, sepsis isn’t as easy to diagnose as it seems)
Beverly Hills, Ca: didn’t stay in communication with the patient psychotherapist (we have to do that? had no idea!); failing to put 3 specific lab reports in the chart; failing to get CURES report for a patient on buprenorphine who was an opioid addict.
Monterey, Ca: nice… 2 felony counts for stalking;1 felony count vandalism;1 misdemeanor for unlawful entry in someone’s home; (this woman’s a thug!! dayum!); 5 year probation (why?!) and has to take ethics course and can’t have solo practice.
Sherman Oaks, Ca: prescribed medical marijuana without proper exam; public reprimand (meaning, it goes in your record so you can be shamed).
Encinitas, Ca: mental incompetency and physical incompetency; asked to surrender license.
San Mateo, Ca: violated board ordered probation by testing positive for a controlled substance; had to surrender license.
Horseshoe Bay, Tx: did a vein procedure one someone but didn’t adequately document the extent of disease; public reprimand. I suspect there was a complaint later by the patient and an investigation was done.
Ontario, Canada: unsure as to why but had his surgical practice limited with a 3 year probation.
Gardena, Ca: 1 felony count for conspiracy for health care fraud; 6 counts of actual health care fraud; and he is now a “fugitive at large” because homey decided to not show up for his court hearing; license revoked.
Chico, Ca: didn’t document the analysis of a CSF fluid, didn’t document an exam before hospital admission; public reprimand.
Los Angeles, Ca: kept inadequate records for 6 patients; must take a documentation course; public reprimand.
Pasadena, Ca: ‘committed acts of gross negligence by kissing a patient’; (how the shit is that gross negligence?); didn’t keep good records; had to (chose to?) surrender license.
Mobile, Al: prescribed controlled substances for no good medical purpose; was already on board probation; license revoked.
Los Angeles, Ca: failed to meet the standard of care for 3 patients; 35 month probation; must take courses and needs a practice monitor.
Santa Cruz, Ca: here we go:
- unprofessional conduct (it’s a guy so I have some ideas)
- gross negligence
- repeated negligent acts
- excessive prescribing
- failure to maintain adequate and accurate records
- prescribing without an appropriate medical exam
- prescribing to an addict
got 3 years probation;(not bad for all that)
Concord, Ca: alcohol related; 5 year probation.
Rio Dell, Ca: this one did a number too:
- unprofessional conduct
- gross negligence
- repeated negligent acts
- incompetence
- failure to maintain adequate records
same as the others, at first license was revoked, then stayed, then dropped down to a probation.
Laguna Beach, Ca: willful failure to file reports of foreign banks and financial accounts; license surrendered. I had to dig into this one a little more and here is all that’s listed under their medical license:
- misdemeanor conviction
- felony conviction
- malpractice judgement
- hospital disciplinary actions
- admin action taken by State or Federal gov’t
- Arbitration award
basically, there seems to have been an $8 million tax evasion in a Luxemburg account. And guess what, his accountant was also found guilty. Reviewing the case also reveals a prison sentence that must be faced. The dude owned a bunch of managed care medical practices.
Desert Hot Springs, Ca: charged with gross negligence for a patient that died from peritonitis after a bowel perf; surrender of license.
Solana Beach, Ca: yea this one is weird; apparently he is doing some weird homeopathic shit and there was something with ozone? This is what it reads: The accusation expresses concerns about his use of homeopathic “energy water,” craniosacral therapy, healing touch, ozone therapy, “cold” red laser treatment, frequency specific microcurrent (FSM), and kinesiology; (energy water??!); 3 year probation.
Napa, Ca: violated board ordered probation because he tested positive for alcohol; probation extended for 2 more years.
Orange, Ca: gross negligence; I dug in a little more and it’s because a patient with agoraphobia who was homebound who was 40+ years old had vaginal bleeding which he didn’t work up for CA – apparently that’s what the patient had.
Berkeley, Ca: misdemeanor conviction for DUI; public reprimand.
Porterville, Ca: This one was interesting, if you read the court documents it’s obvious the board just wanted to go after this guy; they used 2 patient examples and destroyed his documentation and medication prescribing. 7 year probation; mind you, the guy is nearly 70 years old. Mostly involving giving tons of different controlled/sedating meds to these patients (ambien, xanax, robaxin, percocet, vicodin, neurontin).
Sacramento, Ca: DUI, probation.
Granite Bay, Ca: charged with unprofessional conduct for trying to hit and kick a restrained psych patient; 3 year probation, needs to take an ethics and anger management course.
Redmond, Or: 5 year probation for prescribing antibiotics and ordering labs that 2 patietns didn’t need! Fuck! That’s harsh man – how many antibiotics do I give that aren’t totally needed?
Pacifica, Ca: this one went to a Superior Court; gross negligence and sexual misconduct, sexual exploitation; license surrendered. Guys, this one is a juicy one! This doctor started having a sexual relationship with this patient (both men, the patient HIV+). Then after a year or so the patient wasn’t happy with their relationship and the patient was still seeing this doctor. So, the patient filed a sexual harassment against the doctor who then ended up as you can see.
Chula Vista, Ca: by far, this one is the winner! Okay, so first, this female doctor opened a laser clinic and was doing stuff she wasn’t supposed to, then she tried to hide it, and so she only got a public reprimand. It all came about because her ex-partner in the business knew her shenanigans and they had a fall-out and after suing her for slander, he decided to go after her clinic, which he did successfully. The irony is that just a few years before, this woman’s husband was involved in a lawsuit where he got bamboozled because he invested with someone who was a shyster. Amazing. Thank you Google.
I have to stop here because this post took a long time to research. It got more interesting towards the end when I realized I could Google each case because all that is public information.
What Have We Learned?
Lawyer up!
Everyone who does something wicked bad gets their medical licensed revoked at first. Then they get a lawyer and it turns into a 3-5 year probation.
In fact, want to know which lawyer to use? Look through the various online cases and see what the outcomes were. Then look which lawyer was used – I have a feeling that there will be a pattern.
Probation Sucks
There are a lot of stipulations in a probation. And though, as you read, many didn’t adhere and only had their probation extended. But some got their license revoked.
In the probation, they can write “cannot break any laws”. Well, speeding above certain speeds and some other simple things can be misdemeanors.
No Matter How Perfect You Think You Are…
If the board wanted to, they could randomly audit a few of my charts and they would GUARANTEED find things in there for which they could reprimand me. Whether it’s inadequate documentation, or giving medication when not indicated, ordering a test that isn’t 100% indicated, etc.
I’m not a bad doctor but I don’t document every single factoid for every single URI patient. That’s all that’s needed to shaft me.
But… you need to get on the board’s radar first. How to best achieve that? I have compiled a useful list in order to expediently help you part with your medical license:
- have sex with a patient or give them head during every visit
- prescribe controlled substances without documenting why it’s needed
- continue prescribing opioids to someone who has “opioid use disorder” as a diagnosis in their chart
- kick your psych patient who is restrained
- punch your psych patient who is restrained
- open a medical practice without getting the proper city licenses
- let one of your assistants perform medical tasks they aren’t allowed to do in the medical office that you didn’t license properly
- piss off a patient whose medical records aren’t 100% in tip-top shape
- hide your cash in another country and try to commit tax fraud
- ignore signs of cancer, signs of sepsis, signs of imminent death
- make a single, tiny mistake when you’re doing anything as stupid as treating patient with holy water or whatever the fuck that was
- perform the tiniest, most insignificant procedure without crossing all your t’s and dotting all your i’s
- get into any kind of trouble relating to alcohol
- get into any kind of trouble when prescribing medical marijuana