US surgeon forged signature for pills

An orthopaedic surgeon who forged prescriptions for himself and his wife was a ‘‘danger to the public’’, according to the Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal, which fined him $19,000.

American national Stephen Augustine worked at Gisborne Hospital from October 2014 to March 2016.

On 20 occasions between August 2015 and March 2016, he wrote prescriptions for codeine phosphate on Gisborne Hospital generic prescription pads under the name of a colleague and forged that co-worker’s signature.

He used his own patient details and those of his wife before presenting the prescriptions at seven different community pharmacies in the Gisborne area and collecting the drugs himself.

He fraudulently obtained 1970 pills over a seven-month period.

Augustine’s offending led to his colleague being temporarily prevented by his employer from writing prescriptions.

Police laid 20 charges against Augustine. He appeared in Gisborne District Court in May 2016, and was discharged without conviction.

The Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal members had heard a charge against Augustine in April. One part of that charge related to his forging the signature of another medical practitioner.

The other related to prescribing codeine phosphate tablets for his wife when he knew or ought to have known that such prescribing of a drug of dependence was inappropriate and/or contrary to acceptable medical practice.

In a recently released finding, the tribunal said it ‘‘had no hesitation in finding the charge and each of its two particulars both severally and cumulatively amounted to professional misconduct’’.

Augustine, who did not attend the hearing, no longer lived in New Zealand and did not intend to return to practise medicine here, the tribunal said.

There had been ‘‘plenty of opportunities’’ for Augustine to respond to the charges but he had not done so.

‘‘The tribunal found that the doctor is a danger to the public which needs protection from him,’’ it said.

Augustine’s doctor’s registration was cancelled and was ordered to pay costs of $19,000.

The tribunal requested that the New Zealand Medical Council send a copy of its decision to the appropriate authorities in the states of Florida and Georgia and the federal authorities in the United States ‘‘so that those authorities there are fully conversant with the matters raised in this decision’’.

‘‘The tribunal found that the doctor is a danger to the public, which needs protection from him.’’ Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal