Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
ATLANTA (AP) — Physicians whose misconduct got them barred from practicing medicine in other states have won permission to work in Georgia, a review by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has found.
The newspaper (http://bit.ly/10ywV3h ) examined more than 500 licensing and disciplinary decisions involving Georgia physicians. On nearly two dozen occasions, the board allowed doctors cited for criminal offenses or other misconduct to practice in Georgia even when boards elsewhere refused to license them. Some of those doctors committed financial crimes or other transgressions that likely would not directly harm patients. Yet others had inappropriate sexual relations with patients or engaged in other serious misconduct.
Officials from the Georgia Composite Medical Board would not comment on specific cases, citing state law that makes investigations and licensing applications confidential. In general, they said doctors with checkered pasts are only licensed if they no longer pose a threat to the public and are monitored.
"I can't go case by case, but I can give you a scenario," said Dr. David Retterbush, the board's chairman and a Valdosta surgeon. "An individual will go to treatment, have advocates who say, 'This person is rehabilitated. He can practice if he does this, does that.'"
In one instance, the board allowed Dr. Armando Sanchez to practice medicine. He pleaded no contest 12 years ago to solicitation of capital murder after he was accused of trying to hire a hit man to kill a disgruntled patient in Houston. The medical board in Texas revoked his license and refused to reconsider its decision. The medical board in California did the same.
In Georgia, medical authorities were willing to give Sanchez another chance.
When the former chairman of the Texas Medical Board was told that Sanchez had been licensed in Georgia, his first response was, "Wow."
The murder-for-hire plot "just smacked of somebody you wouldn't want to be your doctor," said Dr. Lee Anderson, an ophthalmologist in Fort Worth, Texas.
Texas prosecutors accused Sanchez of arranging to pay a police officer $20,000 to kill a patient with whom he had a disagreement over a workers' compensation claim. A former attorney for Sanchez, Ace Pickens, said the murder-for-hire charge was a misunderstanding. He said Sanchez never intended to arrange for a killing.
___
Information from: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, http://www.ajc.com
Copyright © The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
