Few bad doctors removed

The following story appeared in a recent downstate edition of the New York Post, and on its Web page (www.nypost.com) No similar stories have been found in Capital Region newspapers.

See also 'Health department report lacks detail' and 'State laws weak on medical errors' below.

FEW LOUSY MDs LOSE LICENSES

By SUSAN EDELMAN
New York Post

The state revoked the licenses of only nine New York doctors last year despite receiving nearly 7,000 complaints, The Post has learned.

The state's Office of Professional Medical Conduct stripped 14 doctors and three physician assistants of licenses, down from 49 in 2002, officials said.

But six of those booted last year worked in other states — including a homeless osteopath in Las Vegas — while being licensed here, and New York simply yanked their licenses after those states did, records show.

A new report on the performance of the OPMC, a Health Department unit that disciplines doctors, is fueling criticism that the state isn't aggressive enough in getting rid of bad doctors.

The report — released last week after months of prodding from The Post — is the first in over three years, despite the fact that the Health Department is required by law to issue one yearly.

"It takes somebody to really bother them and create bad publicity to get them to do what they're supposed to," said Arthur Levin, director of the Center for Medical Consumers, a Manhattan patient-advocacy group.

He and other watchdogs complain the OPMC lacks accountability. Covering the last three years, the report says the OPMC took some 320 disciplinary actions in 2004 — down from 411 in 2002.

Seventeen medical licenses were revoked and 116 suspended, and 85 doctors surrendered their licenses — all as a result of alleged misconduct, fraud or incompetence.
Last year's offenders included Manhattan psychiatrist John Edgar, who had failed to pay off student loans, and Brooklyn shrink Charles Breen, who "conducted therapy" with a female patient by sitting her on his lap, rubbing lotion on her body and French-kissing her, records show. The woman overdosed 17 times on drugs he'd prescribed.

Then there was Maher Eter, a New York doctor who injected a lethal dose of painkillers into a patient who died three days later.

And White Plains shrink Alvin Yapalater prescribed an appetite suppressant to an obese man he described as "a hippo." The patient died four years later, in 2001 — weighing 12 pounds more than when he started.

Consumer watchdogs blasted the OPMC for doing too little to police the 60,000 MDs practicing statewide.

"We believe there are a lot more problem doctors out there who aren't being investigated by the state," said Blair Horner, legislative director of the New York Public Interest Research Group.

He co-authored a Study titled "Failing to Act," published in December 2003, that found the OMPC taking fewer duisciplinary actions against doctors despite a doubling of fees to fund the agency.

Horner also found many New York sanctions to be based on discipline meted out in other states. "To some extent, the numbers are artificially inflated," he said of the OPMC report.
A Post review of the records found that five of the 14 doctors whose New York licenses were revoked last year practiced in Illinois, Nevada, North Carolina, Texas and Virginia, where authorities had investigated them.

Yet Health Department spokesman Bill Van Slyke defended the OPMC's performance, calling New York's "one of most aggressive professional medical boards in the nation." He also blamed the failure to produce annual reports on the state's switch to a new computer-data system.

Additional reporting by Lindsay Powers