State board’s treatment of doctor strange
Strange. Very strange. Unless you buy into Dr. James Gabroy’s belief that the Nevada State Medical Board is solely out to harass him — and the evidence seems to lean more that way every day — there is no other way to describe the board’s treatment of an internist who’s never had malpractice, incompetence, fraudulent billing, patient abandonment or sexual misconduct issues.
Earlier this month, I told of how the board scheduled a Sept. 28 hearing in Reno, where the 69-yearold Gabroy was to defend himself against charges of bad penmanship — no, there aren’t any claims that his alleged bad handwriting hurt patients in any way. Not even a claim that a prescription had to be rewritten.
Punishment in Gabroy’s case ranges from a $5,000 fine to license revocation.
Why was the board requiring Gabroy go to Reno? Why couldn’t he have teleconferenced remarks out of Las Vegas? He’s done that before. As his attorney Colleen Platt notes, there is no statute requiring him to go to Reno.
“The reason they want me to go to Reno is strictly punitive,” Gabroy said. “They want me to go to their fortress of power. They just want to inconvenience me and my patients. They don’t like my attitude toward their ridiculous complaints.”
As Platt notes, there’s also no statute indicating to whom Gabroy’s records must be legible. His staff and medical billing office read his records. So can patients and pharmacies and other doctors. But a doctor the board hired said she can’t.
Gabroy charges UMR, an offshoot of insurance giant United Healthcare, filed the initial complaint, claiming its employees couldn’t read his writing. The fax number of some records in the case sent to the medical board was UMR’s.
Ed Cousineau, the board’s executive director, won’t comment. Nor will a spokesman for United Healthcare.
Gabroy contends UMR owes him $100,000 and uses the complaint as a stalling tactic.
Now it turns out the Sept. 28 hearing the board set up nearly two months ago — Gabroy lined up three doctors, a California handwriting expert and a billing expert to testify — is postponed largely because the board says something is wrong with its teleconferencing equipment in Las Vegas, where the three Las Vegas doctors were to testify.
So Gabroy’s witnesses could have testified from Las Vegas but