Unnamed Manitoba doctor's licence revoked due to psychiatric illness
27.08.2008 20:02
Health
- Source: cbc.ca
Questions are being raised about a Winnipeg doctor whose licence was revoked due to a psychiatric problem but whose name is being kept secret, even from the doctor's former patients. In June 2004, the province's medical review committee, which is made up of provincial bureaucrats and members of the Manitoba College of Physicians and Surgeons, launched an investigation into the doctor's billing. The committee wanted to see charts and notes for specific patients. The doctor initially agreed to provide the documentation, but ultimately refused to provide the information or co-operate with the investigation, according to the college. 'By concealing the doctor's name, they are in effect preventing people from engaging in the kind of prudent checking that I think I would want.'Arthur Schafer, Ethics professorThe doctor stopped practising sometime in 2005, but the investigation continued. In March 2007, the review committee referred the matter to the College of Physicians and Surgeons, which held its own inquiry, then revoked the doctor's licence to practise. The physician "demonstrated an incapacity or unfitness to practise medicine and is suffering from an ailment that might, if the physician were permitted to practise, constitute a danger to the public," the college said in its decision. The decision later refers to the doctor's illness as a "psychiatric ailment." The doctor was also ordered to pay the costs of the investigation and hearing, a total of $23,477. Name withheld due to 'safety concerns'Typically when the college censures a doctor, both the decision and the doctor's name are published. But in this case, the college decided to withhold the name due to "safety concerns," the decision said. College officials would not say whose safety was at risk, or comment specifically on the reason for the decision to withhold the name in this case. "There may be times when there is someone involved in that process who would be harmed or embarrassed by the release of the name, and or there may be times when the actual release of the physician's name would be extremely harmful to the physician," college registrar Bill Pope told CBC News. Patients entitled to know: ethics expertBut Arthur Schafer, an ethics professor at the University of Manitoba, says the anonymity "doesn't pass the smell test. "If there is serious reason to question the competence of this doctor, the patients are entitled to know if it was their doctor and that they might wish to seek a second opinion," he said. "They're claiming that there is a safety concern but it's not named, and it's not explained that has led them to protect the identity of this particular doctor. There is always a balance. "But when you put on one side of the scale the potential health and safety of all this doctor's patients, I find it difficult to imagine what you would put on the other side of this scale that would justify not alerting patients to the danger that they may need to seek a second opinion." Officials with the college would not say if the doctor's ailment might have existed before the inquiry began in 2004. While the college had some information on who the doctor was treating when he last practised medicine, they did not attempt to obtain a comprehensive list of all patients, and it's not clear if any patients were informed about the situation. "What we do is, if it's necessary, the physician will withdraw from practice, and at that point, of course, it's obvious and the physician isn't practising and so that's our ability to say that the public is no longer at risk," Pope said. Publishing the information in the newsletter and on its website without the doctor's name is sufficient notice, according to the college. But Schafer's not so sure: "The college's first duty is to protect the public. I think that by concealing the doctor's name, they are in effect preventing people from engaging in the kind of prudent checking that I think I would want." 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