Yale doctor fined $10K

5 others cited by state medical board

The state Medical Examining Board Tuesday fined a Yale New Haven Hospital doctor $10,000 for abandoning a patient who was detoxing and reached an agreement with a Norwalk doctor to stop practicing medicine because his lapse in care contributed to the death of a patient.

The board fined Dr. Rey Ramos of Orange, who works at Yale New Haven Hospital’s Primary Care Center, $10,000, reprimanded him, placed his license on probation for two years and banned him from prescribing buprenorphine, a drug used to treat opioid addiction. Ramos agreed to the punishment in a consent order without admitting wrongdoing.

In September, state officials had proposed fining Ramos $5,000, but board members said it was too lenient. The patient who had filed the complaint against Ramos also objected to the penalty. She wrote to state officials that he should have his license revoked because he nearly killed her when he didn’t answer her calls for days while she had severe withdrawal symptoms. She also objected to Tuesday’s consent order, saying in a letter to the board that she still sought a much harsher penalty.

In the Norwalk case, Dr. Martin Perlin admitted no wrongdoing but agreed to stop practicing medicine on Aug. 31. The consent order the board approved Tuesday also reprimands him and places his license on probation. It said that Perlin’s lapses in care contributed to a patient death and serious injury to another patient.

Perlin ordered an antigen test, which is used to diagnose cancer, on a patient 30 times between 2006 and 2011 without referring the patient to an oncologist or discussing the results with the patient, the order said. Christopher Stan, a spokesman for the state Department of Public Health, said that patient died.

While treating a resident in a state Department of Developmental Services facility in 2011, Perlin failed to diagnose a bacterial infection and prescribed a drug to the patient that he should have known the patient was allergic to, the consent order said.

The order said Perlin also prescribed an opioid painkiller 18 times to another patient without seeing the patient.

In an unrelated case in June, the board fined Perlin $5,000 and reprimanded him for prescribing high doses of opioids to a prison inmate, DPH records show.

The board also voted to recommend to Dr. Raul Pino, the DPH commissioner, that he order Beverly Jackson of Norwalk to cease and desist from diagnosing, treating or operating on patients because she does not have a license to practice medicine, the board’s memorandum of decision said. For several years, Jackson has used a scanning device to diagnose or treat patients for colon cancers, tumors, lymphoma or emotional disorders, the memorandum said.

Jackson calls herself a doctor of Nedicine, and according to her website, Nedicine.org, she established the American Nedicine Licensing Board in 2004 to protect the rights of professionals to practice alternative medicine.

Jackson had sued DPH in federal court, claiming her federal trademark of “Nedicine” allows her to treat patients in Connecticut. In June, Senior District Judge Charles S. Haight Jr. ruled she was mistaken and dismissed her lawsuit. He wrote that further litigation by Jackson would be frivolous, but her appeal of his decision is pending in the federal 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals.

The board revoked the medical license of Dr. Wilson Bernales of Fayetteville, Arkansas for lying in 2014 when he applied for his Connecticut license and was asked if he had faced any termination from a training program, the board’s memorandum of decision states. Bernales had been fired from an internship in Rome, Georgia in 2002, the memorandum states.

Bernales also lied to officials in Virginia and New York, the memorandum states. The Connecticut board had proposed fining Bernales $15,000 and placing his Connecticut license on probation for a year, but DPH officials had objected and asked that his license be revoked due to his “drumroll of falsity and deception,” Staff Attorney David Tilles wrote in a request to the board.

Bernales has been “repeatedly deceiving various state medical and licensing boards,” Tilles wrote. “This is a case of knowing falsehood.”

Bernales’ lawyer, Gregory J. Pepe, had asked the board in writing to reject DPH’s motion to revoke Bernales’ license, saying that no facts have been presented that Bernales is not a competent physician.

In other business, the board:

• Reprimanded Dr. Roozebeh Badii of McLean, Virginia for giving two presigned prescription forms to nursing staff at a Maryland nursing home so they could prescribe medication when he was not available.

• Reprimanded Dr. Huping Zhou of Los Angeles because Virginia officials reprimanded him in 2016 for inappropriate drug prescribing practices for 10 patients.

State law allows Connecticut officials to discipline doctors who hold Connecticut licenses if they have been disciplined by other states.