Well being officers in Florida are asking an administrative regulation decide to completely ban a doctor from recommending medical hashish for sufferers, droop his medical license for 5 years, and high quality him $10,000 following an investigation that discovered he violated state regulation by not performing physicals on undercover brokers posing as sufferers searching for medical hashish playing cards, WFSU Public Media stories.
The proposed penalties by the Well being Division in opposition to Joseph Dorn — who has practiced in Florida for greater than 30 years — date again to a 2019 criticism alleging that the doctor violated state regulation by failing to conduct bodily examinations of “Affected person O.G.” and “Affected person B.D.” The division additionally accuses him of using a “trick or scheme” within the apply of medication, the report says.
Ryan Andrews, Dorn’s legal professional, mentioned his consumer didn’t do something unsuitable and that the Division of Well being “deliberately” tricked Dorn “into ordering medical marijuana for B.D. and O.G. primarily based on their presentation of illegal falsehoods regarding their qualifying circumstances (i.e., PTSD and anxiousness, inter alia),” based on a proposed advisable order outlined by WFSU.
Well being Division attorneys argue that Dorn did not “appropriately vet his sufferers” and observe a 2017 regulation requiring docs to make use of sure procedures earlier than figuring out whether or not sufferers are eligible for medical hashish.
“As an alternative of recognizing this accountability, the respondent (Dorn) used his designation as a professional doctor to liberally qualify sufferers to obtain medical marijuana by solely performing perfunctory consultations and ignoring most of the necessities imposed by the Legislature,” mentioned the company’s legal professionals of their proposed advisable order.
Andrews added in his advisable order that the Florida Well being Division doesn’t embody information about any of Dorn’s many real sufferers. As an alternative, as a result of the undercover brokers lied about their circumstances, “it was unattainable for Dr. Dorn to have concluded that the advantages of medical marijuana outweighed the dangers for O.G. and B.D., inserting Dr. Dorn able of ‘heads I win tails you lose’ in favor of the well being division.”
Administrative Regulation Decide W. David Watkins, who held a listening to in Dorn’s case in October, is contemplating the proposed advisable orders, which had been submitted final Thursday.
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