Indian Dr is a Fraud

[Guest The Pom Queen]

A man is facing a $30,000 fine after allegedly masquerading as a doctor at New South Wales hospitals for more than a decade.

 

Key points:

 

Shyam Acharya is accused of stealing an Indian doctor's identity before posing as a doctor in Australia

Mr Acharya worked in NSW from 2003 with only one complaint ever registered

NSW Health has defended the department's recruitment practices

Shyam Acharya is accused of stealing a doctor's name and medical qualifications while in India before moving to Australia and becoming a citizen.

 

To find work in Australia, he allegedly used fraudulent documents to gain registration with the Medical Council of New South Wales in 2003.

 

Mr Acharya worked at Manly, Hornsby, Wyong and Gosford hospitals under the name Sarang Chitale up until 2014.

 

As a junior doctor, he was under the supervision of other clinicians and NSW Health says one clinical incident involving a team Mr Acharya worked in was reported.

 

The patient involved in the incident has been notified.

 

Mr Acharya's current whereabouts are unknown, but the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) has confirmed it has laid charges against him for a breach of the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law.

 

The charge carries a maximum penalty of $30,000.

 

NSW Health's deputy secretary Karen Crawshaw said no complaints were received by the Medical Council of NSW or the Health Care Complaints Commission.

 

"The root cause of this was false identity to get into the country in the first place," she said.

 

"The documentation that got him registered was in fact legitimate documentation of a doctor.

 

"We now require written references and contact directly referees of doctors seeking employment."

 

Ms Crawshaw had defended the department's recruitment practices and said the blame does not rest with the state.

 

Health Department to crack down on fake passports

 

NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard said the situation was shocking and that he would raise it at a national level.

 

"It is quite disturbing that a foreign national could get through our border protection with a false passport and ID based on an Indian citizen who had trained as a doctor," he said.

"I will raise it at this month's COAG Health Minister's meeting to see whether the checks and balances are in place at a national level so that this can't occur again."

 

Mr Hazzard said he has also directed NSW Health to make sure it did whatever it could to look beyond fake passports.

 

"The Ministry of Health has advised me there have been substantial changes since 2003 in the checks that are made, but I want health to revisit the issue," he said.

 

Opposition health spokesman Walt Secord has called on the State Government to reveal if it has contacted all patients who may have been affected between 2003 and 2014.

 

"It is incredible that this man could practice for 11 years and come into contact with hundreds of patients and go unnoticed," he said.

The ABC has sought comment from the Australian Federal Police and the Department of Immigration and Border Protection.

[CaptainR]

Suspect he must have underperformed somewhere along the way for it to be eventually flagged up and investigated.

[Guest The Pom Queen]

Suspect he must have underperformed somewhere along the way for it to be eventually flagged up and investigated.

I can't believe how he got away with it for 11 years.

[CaptainR]

I can't believe how he got away with it for 11 years.

Having worked with incompetent professionals, one thing I have noticed is that many of them move jobs regularly which prevents them from being detected. Others seem to keep their head down and avoid anything which expose them. Occasionally you get the bully that shouts the loudest to divert attention from themselves.

[BacktoDemocracy]

Well you would have thought that they might have learnt from Dr Jayant Patel,aka Dr Death, at Bundaberg hospital in 2005-10, but I'm forgetting that was in Queensland, it seemed to be that his qualifications were just accepted without any checks being done .

I seem to remember he got away with it because there was no communication with referees or previous employers and then when he was rumbled as incompetent he almost slipped the net, he was about to get on a flight paid for by Queensland health they were so eager to cover up the mess.

Sounds suspiciously like the same scenario when no one knows where this man is.

 

But its not just in Australia, here its untrained rip off merchants buying up care homes and milking the fees by employing untrained staff and spending no money on care, two of them were convicted and were just fined 80k, despite putting elderly peoples lives at risk and probably netting 500k, some other poor sap defrauded a sports star of 45k and got 18mths

Edited March 7, 2017 by BacktoDemocracy

[Dragonflygecko]

How scary, honestly this is ridiculous!

[northshorepom]

It's not funny because in that profession it's so serious, but it does make a mockery of the "tick the box" bureaucratic BS this country is infested with, which despite all its pain has obviously failed in this case. It also raises some questions about the standards of supervision (you could even go so far as to question the clinical competence) of the guy's management in his various positions. Or maybe he was just a natural, or had studied in his own time and just didn't have the ticket......

[Ken]

11 years and an unqualified Doctor's competence is only questioned once? Perhaps medicine isn't as difficult as some Doctors would like you to believe?

[robfromdublin]

He was a Junior Doctor. I'm sure the nurses just did his job for him!

[JockinTas]

The whole saga is beyond belief. As northshorepom said, despite all the bureaucracy and hoops most of us have to jump through he seems to have slipped through the cracks.

[Guest]

The fines the bigger joke, this guy potentially could have killed or at best misdiagnosed patience.

[ScottieGirl]

I met him, he worked for the same company as me albeit not for very long as he was fired before his 6 months probation was up as his work was not up to standard and he was obnoxious to deal with. He was not reported to the AMA as he did not make any clinical errors largely I suspect as he didn't do much. His tenure at that company was not reported in the news so I guess he left it off his resume. 

The company checks qualifications but as we now know  he stole a genuine doctors ID. References are also checked but these are easy to forge, just give a mates details.

He got caught out when he left the health care system and started to work in the pharma sector. Big bad corporates may be harder nosed but in this case that was all to the good.

 

 

 

[starlight7]

Makes you wonder if there are others like him doesn't it? A good case for fingerprint recognition tied to CVs.

[BacktoDemocracy]

Fingerprinting is going to be a civil  liberties issue, my experience in Australia and that of my wife as a senior manager was that only rarely did people follow thro and contact referees and speak to the person quoted, and that unfortunately is happening here in the UK now based on her own experience.

[Guest The Pom Queen]

On 15/04/2017 at 8:18 PM, starlight7 said:

Makes you wonder if there are others like him doesn't it? A good case for fingerprint recognition tied to CVs.

@starlight7 I'm sure there are and a large percentage at that

[starlight7]

I like the fact that my GP has her qualifications on the wall and that they are from a local university!

[Ken]

7 hours ago, starlight7 said:

I like the fact that my GP has her qualifications on the wall and that they are from a local university!

How do you know they're her qualifications? They don't have her photo on them do they? They may have been awarded to the person whose identity she stole - although I have to admit she's taken a bit of a risk choosing someone from a local university!

[starlight7]

There's always one... she was at our local uni at the same time as someone else I know .  But I guess she could be someone else who had plastic surgery so they look at the same and also had a husband in the same practice who is not really her husband but just someone pretending to be to give her credibility. Anyway- why do we let overseas trained doctors in at all- we have plenty of homegrown ones??

[BacktoDemocracy]

1 hour ago, starlight7 said:

There's always one... she was at our local uni at the same time as someone else I know .  But I guess she could be someone else who had plastic surgery so they look at the same and also had a husband in the same practice who is not really her husband but just someone pretending to be to give her credibility. Anyway- why do we let overseas trained doctors in at all- we have plenty of homegrown ones??

Because there aren't enough home grown ones in neither the UK nor Australia, both countries have relied on poaching other countries doctors than invest the money in training indigenous  ones. 

[ScottieGirl]

The dept of health agrees with you @starlight7. They have recommended removing GPs from the SOL  at the next review. 

[Johndoe]

On 17/04/2017 at 11:41 PM, BacktoDemocracy said:

Because there aren't enough home grown ones in neither the UK nor Australia, both countries have relied on poaching other countries doctors than invest the money in training indigenous  ones. 

You say that, "both countries have relied on poaching other countries doctors rather than invest the money in training indigenous  ones"..................well excuse me but if the UK hadn't invested money in "training indigenous ones ([white] Brits and 2nd/3rd generation migrants subsequently Brits) how/why then could they be poached by Australia? Likewise Indian or any other ethnic group of doctors migrating away from their country of training.

The problem doesn't lie with "training".............there will always be those committed persons who will train, even at their own expense, but the problem lies with retaining those who have trained, who choose to "move on" either because of salary, working conditions, ethics, etc

Your constant inferences to "failure of capitalism" ie "attack of "the system" without (illustrated) consideration of "human factors" does nothing to advance the cause of socialist ideals, indeed, it is more likely to simply cause those who you wish to "educate" to switch off............................tread softly because you tread on my dreams :-)

[BacktoDemocracy]

On 18/04/2017 at 0:14 AM, Johndoe said:

You say that, "both countries have relied on poaching other countries doctors rather than invest the money in training indigenous  ones"..................well excuse me but if the UK hadn't invested money in "training indigenous ones ([white] Brits and 2nd/3rd generation migrants subsequently Brits) how/why then could they be poached by Australia? Likewise Indian or any other ethnic group of doctors migrating away from their country of training.

The problem doesn't lie with "training".............there will always be those committed persons who will train, even at their own expense, but the problem lies with retaining those who have trained, who choose to "move on" either because of salary, working conditions, ethics, etc

Your constant inferences to "failure of capitalism" ie "attack of "the system" without (illustrated) consideration of "human factors" does nothing to advance the cause of socialist ideals, indeed, it is more likely to simply cause those who you wish to "educate" to switch off............................tread softly because you tread on my dreams :-)

If you got out a bit more and read some proper newspapers you would find that the NHS admits that it could not run without overseas doctors and nurses and hospitals have recruitment fairs all across the globe to recruit staff and it is becoming very hard to recruit EU doctors now because of brexit.

They are even failing to recruit Indian sub continent and Fillipino  doctors and nurses and this is the same in Australia as here.

Both countries have restricted  the number of training places for doctors and nurses causind a shortfall in numbers and relied for years on poaching doctors from elsewhere thereby transferring the costs of training onto other countries and avoiding paying the training costs.

The present UK govt has just stuck 2 fingers up to the populace here by making trainee nurses pay for their own training thereby ensuring a further fall in homegrown nurses, they used to get a bursary but they are so intent upon making everybody pay for everything themselves they just ignore that certain professions contribute to the public good and therefore have to be supported in order to make society work. Someone who is smart enough to be a doctor, nurse , teacher, social worker can figure out that getting 80,000 pounds worth of student debt to do a job without any societal standing and be criticised constantly for peanut pay doesn't stack up and decide to do a business degree and get a reps job with a drugs company at twice the starting pay and 10% of the hassle.

Making every decision the responsibility of the individual is very appealing but leads to a self centered , mean spirited and selfish world where every decision is based on self interest, this was Ayan Rand's premise in her book 'Atlas Shrugs' it is beloved of the far right because it legitimises  pure selfish self interest as the way that every decision is made, but it fails to address how you build a just, caring and compassionate society when everyone adheres to that philosophy.