First doctor ever thrown out of Medical Services Plan loses case
A Vancouver doctor with a long history of disciplinary actions and even a criminal conviction has lost his bid to get his medical career back on track.
A judge has dismissed the application by Dr. Gustavo Jose Carvalho to reverse the permanent revocation of his Medical Services Plan (or MSP) billing number, which is required to bill for services provided to patients in the public health system.
Justice Shelley Fitzpatrick of the B.C. Supreme Court said even Carvalho doesn’t dispute his “checkered” past.
“In what can only be described as an understatement, Dr. Carv- alho describes his past behaviour as shameful. He acknowledges that he has made several poor judgments,” the judge said in her written decision.
Carvalho, 55, was the first B.C. doctor to be permanently dropped from MSP by the Medical Services Commission.
He’s been in trouble with legal and regulatory authorities for serious improprieties almost from the time he was licensed to practice medicine in B.C. in 1990, after graduating from the University of Alberta medical school in 1988. In 2002, he was convicted of criminal harassment of a former girlfriend, public mischief and breach of the conditions of his sentence. Carvalho’s lawyer, Gerald Fahey, said he can’t comment, but Carvalho could appeal. “He is considering his options at this point (but my) client is not working as a physician. He is disappointed, of course.”
Carvalho and his lawyer argued that the commission failed to take into account his psychiatric condition. But, the judge ruled, “the fundamental concern of the panel was not the cause of Dr. Carvalho’s misdeeds but rather a complete lack of the trust that must neces- sarily be found in order to continue the relationship between him and the MSP.”
Carvalho’s permanent delisting from the Medical Services Plan is the maximum penalty “reserved for the most exceptional, egregious cases of individuals motivated by greed using a deliberate plan to defraud,” the commission said in its judgment.
Dr. Carvalho describes his past behaviour as shameful.