Doctors and nurses “warned” still at work

MELBOURNE:  There are 500 doctors, nurses and other health specialists working in Victorian hospitals and clinics with a black mark on their registration due to addictions, poor performance or conduct risking patient safety.

The group has been allowed to continue treating patients – with those suffering “health” problems having their issues hidden from the public – after medical boards imposed the safety measures through their disciplinary processes.

The extent of restricted health workers can be revealed for the first time by the Herald Sun, with details from the health watchdog showing there are 3000 across Australia working with conditions and undertakings on their registration, due to concerns about their conduct, behaviour and abilities.

With 590,000 registered health professionals working across the country, Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency  (AHPRA) spokeswoman Nicole Newton said fewer than half a per cent required limitations on their registration, with doctors accounting for less than one in six.

“The boards take their job seriously and are not willing to take risks with patient safety,” Ms Newton said.

“Restrictions are designed to keep the public safe.

“If there is a serious risk to health and safety, the boards can suspend registration and stop someone working altogether while they investigate.”

But patient advocates and lawyers have ­accused medical boards of being too soft.

Medical Error Action Group spokeswoman Lorraine Long said patients should not have to put their lives in the hands of anyone facing issues serious enough to warrant registration conditions.

“I don’t believe they should be allowed to practise at all while they have any impairment, because they are dealing with human life”, Ms Long said.

“People go to doctors and get looked after by nurses with 100 per cent trust, and a lot of times that trust is not returned.

“If you go to a pediatrician you would want to know if they are under a condition because they are being investigated by police for child abuse, but the public are none the wiser.”

The restrictions cover 14 professions, including doctors, nurses, dentists, pharmacists and psychologists and relate only to serious conduct and behavioural issues, not routine regulation training or qualification processes.

Read more of GRANT McARTHUR’s story in The Australian 3 November 2013 at:

Warned doctors, nurses and health workers still at work

FOUR OF VICTORIA’S WORST:

Practitioners repeatedly brought to the attention of Victorian medical boards:

DR JAMES LATHAM PETERS
JAILED for 14 years after pleading guilty to negligently infecting 55 women with hepatitis C while treating them at an abortion clinic.

DR RICHARD GEORGE YOUNG
SUSPENDED in 2008 after he paid a female patient $50 for oral sex in his consultation room in 2004. He was also suspended for 15 months in 2001 after the board found he engaged in sexual relationships with two vulnerable patients.  He was reprimanded in 2006 after telling a female patient, “Holy mackerel, you’re small”, during a Pap smear test. He was granted his registration back this year.

DR MARK SCHULBERG
REGISTRATION cancelled for one year in July after he was found guilty of serious misconduct for prescribing addictive drugs to heroin-addicted patients, including more than 25,000 Xanax tablets and 9000 Valium.

DR CYNTHIA WEINSTEIN
THE high-profile cosmetic surgeon agreed to surrender her registration after continuing to treat patients during a 10-year legal battle with authorities over claims of botched facial treatments.  She can still practise non-surgical cosmetic procedures.

Las Vegas: Life sentence for largest US hepatitis C outbreak

Former Las Vegas endoscopy clinic owner, Dr Dipak DESAI, 63, has been sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 18 years, following his criminal convictions in what is believed to be the largest hepatitis C outbreak in the USA.

Clark County District Judge Valerie Adair sentenced DESAI yesterday.  The former state medical board member was found guilty in July of 27 criminal charges, including second-degree murder, in a viral outbreak in 2007 that officials traced to his clinics.  DESAI was convicted in the death of 77-year-old Rodolfo Meana in April 2012, and authorities have since reported the death of a second infected person in the case.  Michael Washington, 73, died on 23 August in Dallas TX of complications from the disease. Prosecutors haven’t decided whether to press additional murder charges, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

DESAI had created a penny-pinching work environment at the Endoscopy Clinic of Southern Nevada, emphasising profits over patient safety and leading to unsafe clinic and injection practices that spread the virus.  The outbreak was believed to be the nation’s largest when it became public in February 2008.

The Southern Nevada Health District notified 63,000 former clinic patients to get tested for potentially fatal blood-borne diseases, including hepatitis and HIV.  Investigators from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta later determined nine people had contracted hepatitis C at two DESAI clinics.  Authorities later said hepatitis C infections of another 105 patients might have been related.

CSL agrees to settle class action

BLOOD products and vaccines supplier CSL expects that settlement of an antitrust class action in the United States will reduce its fiscal 2014 net profit by $USD39 million ($AUD41.47 million).

CSL on Monday said it had agreed to settle the law suit that was filed by various hospital groups in the US and Puerto Rico and has been going on since 2009.  The settlement, including payment of $USD64 million by CSL, is subject to approval by the US Federal Court.  It is tax deductible in the US.

The settlement agreement dismisses claims against CSL and the Plasma Protein Therapeutics Association.

“If approved, the settlement represents a one-off charge reducing NPAT (net profit after tax) expectations for fiscal 2014 by $USD39 million,” CSL said in a statement to the Australian Securities Exchange.

“This charge takes anticipated NPAT growth for the current financial year to approximately seven per cent, at 2012/2013 exchange rates.”

CSL chief executive Paul Perreault said CSL still rejects any allegation of wrongdoing but had negotiated a settlement to avoid the matter dragging on.

“To pursue the case further would have required several more years of management time and focus as well as substantial additional legal costs with no absolute certainty of the outcome,” he said.

The lawsuit alleged that CSL and a competitor had conspired to restrict output and artificially increase the price for plasma-derived therapies in the US.

Shares in CSL were 40 cents lower at $64.64 at 1025 AEDT.

A CSL Plasma's plasma collection centre

CSL’s profits will take a $39 million hit if a US court approves the settlement of a class action.

7 October 2013

Brisbane: GP suspended for altering patient notes

Queensland-based GP Dr GARY MARTIN, who retrospectively changed his notes to falsely claim that a patient refused to go to hospital – then submitted those notes as evidence in an inquest, has been found to have committed professional misconduct and been suspended from practising medicine for 12 months including six months plus another six if he breached conditions within three years – and banned him from conducting most surgical procedures except under supervision for at least a year.  Dr MARTIN was also found to have committed unsatisfactory professional conduct on four counts after taking too long to refer two patients with skin cancer to a specialist, and both intentionally misled and avoided responding to AHPRA investigators.

Moscow: Body of evidence on doctor’s drug theft

A surgeon who helped himself to drugs he removed from a patient’s stomach faces up to 15 years in prison for theft and possession of illegal substances.  The 32-year-old doctor had been asked to remove containers of heroin from the stomach of a suspected drug mule in the Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk.  A spokesman for Ministry of the Interior said the doctor helped himself to capsules of the drug after removing them from the man’s stomach in a bid to save his life.  After the operation police checked the containers removed from the smuggler’s stomach and searched the doctor.  They found 5g of heroin hidden in the surgeon’s clothing.  A police spokesman said:  “The doctor was intoxicated at the time of detention.”

Perth: Specialist botches specialist’s op – fined $75,000

A DOCTOR, who almost died after a mismanaged angioplasty that led in part to the largest fine in the Medical Board of Australia’s history, has told how the experience ended his medical career.

Dr Gary Hastwell, a former WA obstetrician who had to give up his medical practice, also revealed that Perth cardiologist Dr KEITH WOOLLARD, AMA president from 1996 to 1998, had still not apologised for a potentially fatal series of errors during an angioplasty in 2009.

Dr Woollard admitted professional misconduct in relation to an angioplasty performed on Dr Hastwell and to acting carelessly and incompetently in relation to those performed earlier on a female patient which together resulted in a $75,000 fine and his being banned from performing angioplasty or stenting for at least 5 years.

Dr Hastwell was 69 when a GP referral put him in Dr Woollard’s care in 2009 with faintness and tachycardia.  An angiogram found several severe stenoses and a possible aneurysm.  Dr Woollard referred him for coronary artery bypass grafting.

But after Dr Hastwell asked about angioplasty and stenting, Dr Woollard did that procedure, which the Tribunal found was contraindicated, and without timely administration of an anticoagulant.

After a thrombus was detected in the left main artery, he also failed to call an emergency resuscitation team or cardiothoracic surgeon when Dr Hastwell went into asystole and needed up to three defibrillation shocks.

Dr Woollard later maintained the decision not to administer an anticoagulant until much later was a nursing error.  Yes, of course doctor, blame the nurse.

“There’s a credibility issue,” Dr Hastwell said of the delay.

“Dr Woollard said it wasn’t a thrombosis when all his actions and everybody else said it was.  He said it was a dissection.  Thrombosis is a clot; a dissection is splitting a vessel, which is a known complication, but he then said not giving the anticoagulant therefore had no consequence.”

Unbelievably Dr Woollard remains chairman of the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand’s General Cardiology Council!  

22 July 2013

Los Angeles: Sacked for spying on Kim Kardashian’s medical records

Six workers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, have been fired after accessing Kim Kardashian‘s medical records.  Hospital officials said the ongoing internal inquiry surrounding the breach occurred during Kardashian’s week-long stay at the facility for the birth of her baby last month.

This is a repeat of Britney Spears’ hospital stay at UCLA Medical Center in March 2008.  Thirteen workers were sacked after accessing Spears’ medical records.

Don’t these ghouls know that medical records are legal documents and every patient world-wide has the right to have them kept private.

14 July 2013

Northam Hospital WA death bungles continue

A 68-YEAR-OLD woman died from a severe allergic reaction to a drug containing sulphur prescribed to her by a doctor, despite 14 separate notes alerting hospital staff of her condition.

She was admitted for a cataract operation, but within hours was dying after being given a 250mg dose of Diamox.  The pill, containing sulphonamides, was administered despite the patient’s medical file containing at least 14 documents in which her allergy to sulphur-based medications was recorded.

A red alert bracelet indicating a patient had allergies was also worn on the patient’s wrist.  Within 20 minutes of being given the medication, the patient complained of shortness of breath. Within two hours, she was dead of anaphylaxis.

WHY DON’T CLINICIANS OBSERVE THESE PATIENT ALERTS?

HOSPITAL MALPRACTICE HISTORY

Previous concerns over the quality of care at the hospital, about 100km east of Perth, has already led to three doctors being suspended after five patients died following discharge.

In March, WA’s Department of Health said the three doctors would be referred to the Medical Board of Australia following an investigation by the state’s chief medical officer Gary Geelhoed.

His report pinpointed a lack of medical leadership in the Emergency Department, poor communication and uncertain roles in and between medical disciplines as major issues at the hospital.

DEADLY INCOMPETENCE TIME AFTER TIME

  1. The hospital first came under scrutiny after the 2010 death of 16-year-old boy who was sent home with Panadol after the hospital failed to diagnose H1N1 influenza.
  2. Then more worrying cases came to light, including the death of 53-year-old woman.  She was sent home with medication for a headache after collapsing in July 2011 but collapsed again within 30 hours and died in Perth two days later.
  3. A 23-year-old nurse died after being sent home on 29 December 2012 with painkillers for a severe headache.
  4. A 12-day-old baby died in 2010 of heart failure after the hospital sent him home twice.
  5. A 69-year-old woman visited the hospital last June with a broken arm, was treated and then returned with vomiting and was found to have acute renal failure.  She was treated but sent home, only to return a week later, fall into a coma and die two weeks later.

All of those cases are also being investigated by the WA Coroner.  

A HOSPITAL TO AVOID FOR YOUR LIFE’S SAKE!

‘Frequent flyer’ doctors trigger most complaints

A small group of so-called “frequent flyer” doctors account for half of all patient complaints, new Australian data shows.

It shows a small percent of doctors account for a large percent of complaints which indicates that patients are not running off to the lawyers or complaints commissions/boards at the drop of a hat.  A new study shows that most patients and doctors are reasonable people and the ones who are complaining have legitimate complaints about the few bad apples.  Doctors need to stop being so paranoid that patients are ‘out to get them’.

A SMALL group of so-called ‘frequent flyer’ doctors account for half of all patient complaints, new Australian data shows.

Researchers from the University of Melbourne analysed 18,000 complaints made to 7 state and territory health service commissions and found that 15% of the 11,000 doctors in the study accounted for 49% of the complaints, corresponding to only 3% of all practising doctors.

The number of prior complaints a doctor experienced strongly predicted their chance of future complaints, with the risk of recurrent complaints nearly double in those with two prior complaints, and 30 times higher in those with 10 or more prior complaints.

Professor Ron Paterson from the University of Auckland said the findings were an “albatross around the neck of the Australian medico-legal system”.

“No one with a passing familiarity with the world of patient complaints will be surprised by the fact there is a group of ‘frequent flyer doctors’ who attract a disproportionate share of complaints,” he wrote in an editorial accompanying the study.

The authors criticised medico-legal institutions for remaining on the sidelines as quality and safety movements had risen over the last 15 years.

“They remain essentially reactive enterprises, with workloads that focus on dealing with the fallout from care that has gone wrong,” they wrote.

Study leader and author Professor David Studdert said the world-first study could form the basis of new strategies for improving quality and safety in healthcare.

“Finding a way to predict, early on, which clinicians are going to experience lots of medico-legal problems in the future is a kind of holy grail in our field,” he said.

“These findings are exciting because they open the way for agencies like health complaints commissions and medical boards to play more of a prevention role, rather than just picking up the pieces after things go wrong.”

“It can’t happen soon enough” says a spokesperson from Medical Error Action Group.

11 April 2013