Doctor Stripped Of License
A doctor in the upstate New York area has just been stripped of his license, forcing 6,200 patients to find new primary physicians in an already crowded marketplace. Dr. Carmen D’Angelo had been practicing medicine for over 20 years before the state health department stripped him of his license and leaving his patients with no advance warning of the ruling.
According to the document [the ruling from the New York state health department], D’Angelo’s professional misconduct includes gross negligence, gross incompetence, failure to maintain accurate records, moral unfitness and abuse of a patient.
Nancy Adams is executive director of the Monroe County Medical Society and says cases of doctors having their licenses revoked are rare. “The Department of Health, the Office for Professional Medical Conduct, what they consider most serious are cases where there’s a potential for a patient to be harmed."
The terms “gross negligence, gross incompetence, moral unfitness and abuse of a patient are rather broad claims, so did the state’s health department have specifics to back up such a “rare” revocation of license?
In several cases, investigators determined that D’Angelo didn’t obtain medical histories on his patients or document adequate physical examinations. He then prescribed anabolic steroids to those patients to treat everything from estrogen deficiencies to unexplained weight loss and multiple sclerosis for which the state found no medical justification.
The state also determined that D’Angelo abused his position of trust and authority when he engaged in sexual relationships with two of his patients, including at least one encounter in his examining room.
Leaving that number of people in the community without a primary care physician is going to be very hard on the medical community in the area, with so many doctors not taking new patients. Will the overcrowding of patients with new doctors make it harder for those doctors to do their jobs which could result in a number of medical accidents?
“It is an extremely, extremely stressful situation." Dr. Tim Mathew, a cardiologist, considers D’Angelo a colleague and friend. He s angry that D’Angelo’s patients were given no warning and made no provisions for them to find alternative care.
He says the state has committed what amounts to medical malpractice. “There are people who will require daily blood thinning medication, they need appropriate referrals. The previous lab investigations need to be checked and new patients to be seen."
