Blatant peer review fraud involving SRMC.
By Damian Allen
Feb 16, 2005, 17:00
After recent allegations of misconduct surfacing around Dr. Akshay Dave, MD, a local physician, several attempts have been made by Virginia Times staff to contact the doctor, as well as supervisors and colleagues from hospitals and practices where Dave worked in the Tri-Cities area and beyond, but to no avail.
Allegations began to surface in recent weeks as Alzenia Mayfield, president of the Petersburg chapter NAACP, told a Times reporter that Dave prescribed medication for her mother, then when he was shown the prescription at a later date, he did not recognize his own prescription. He then allegedly asked Mayfield who had prescribed the medicine for her mother. Dave was working for Southside Regional Medical Center at the time.
According to local sources, the doctor was asked to leave John Randolph Medical Center in Hopewell by hospital administration.
Multiple calls were made to Dave’s office to set an interview to respond to the allegations, but none were returned. Acting on further allegations from additional sources, Times reporters have made attempts to contact former colleagues and administrators who have worked with the doctor in recent years. But no one wants to speak.
Dr. Ramesh Shah, who supervised Dave’s first year residency at a veteran’s hospital in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, refused to comment on the doctor’s term, deferring to public affairs representative Vince Riccardo, who would not confirm allegations that Dave was asked to leave the hospital.
He merely stated that Dave had fulfilled his requirements as a first-year resident. Riccardo would not comment on the doctor’s performance.
Former SRMC administrator David Dunham, now at Mercy Hospital in Merced, California, also refused to comment on any matters concerning SRMC, and instructed his secretary not to put through any calls from Times staff.
Attempts to talk to representatives from the Colonial Heights Convalescent Center, another area where serious allegations of female care concerns have surfaced, have also gained no response.
The story is the same with Dr. Michael Cohen of SRMC, who chaired a committee investigating Dave for previous allegations of misconduct. Cohen allegedly recommended the doctor’s dismissal because of falsifying patient histories and physical examinations and billing patients without seeing them, but the decision was overruled by a hospital executive committee on which colleagues, and a relative, of the doctor sat. Committee members included Dr. Thomas Ross, Dr. Kamlesh Dave, Dr. Nicholas Emiliani, Dr. David Cangcuesta, Dr. Ming Chiu, Dr. John Grizzard, Dr. Tracey Jones, Dr. Sandy Gibson, Dr. Frederick Ende, Dr. Cary Straton, Dr. Ahmed Shahab-Uddin, Dr. Eniola Okelana and Dr. Shirlene Moten.
Allegedly, the doctor made deals with executive committe insiders to refer all patients for surgical consultations to Ross instead of Dr. Benjamin Rice Sr., to whom he was giving referrals prior to the executive committee’s ruling. All cardiology referrals were instructed to be given to Dr. Kamlesh Dave while all GI gastrointesternal consultations to Dr. Gopinath Jadhav.
A former member of the JRMC nursing staff who wished to protect her identity told the Times that Dave’s interaction with female staff left a whole lot to be desired.
"When I worked with him, I found him to be very rude to the female staff on a regular basis," said the woman, stating that the nurses took the heat for his pattern of giving an order, then denying that he gave it. "He was very untrustworthy in the sense that he would give you an order, he would follow it through; if there was a problem with it, then he would deny it."
An affiliate of SRMC since 1989, who wished not to have their identity revealed, also asserted that nurses had made several complaints about the very same issue while working with Dave.
"He (Dave) would call in the middle of the night, or the nurse would call him, and he would give orders," said the man. "Then, he would come in the next morning and write on the chart that he didn’t say these orders. He tried to make it look like the nurses were ‘thick’, so they had to put two nurses on him every time he called in orders to validate everything."
The man went on to describe the doctor’s lack of integrity, outlining Dave’s attempts to allege misconduct among other physicians.
"He said he was witnessing physicians paying each other off by giving money for consults and procedures, which we know was not true," explained the source. "He’s not a very trustworthy guy."
"He was accusing physicians because they weren’t referring his specialist that he liked," the man explained. "He tried to knock them out the box by saying that they were actually in cahoots with each other, exchanging money and making payments for consults."
"He shouldn’t be practicing anymore," continued the man, asserting that the peer review process at the hospital is way off balance and that things get swept under the proverbial rug. "It (allegations of misconduct) disappears. In the QA (Quality Assurance) system, if you are a good ol’ boy, or if you have someone who is chief of staff or above you, all that stuff (allegations) goes through the chief of staff and (others). These people say they are not involved, but they are because they influence who gets crushed and who doesn’t. For years and years, if you look through all the sections, none of the good ol’ boys have ever had a problem."
The curious nature in which hospital and medical staff did not respond to attempts to set up interviews can only bolster recent allegations of peer review fraud. If there has been no misconduct on the part of Dave, then why the difficulty in getting any former colleagues, administrators or supervisors to make a statement?
Times staff continue to try and reach the aforementioned medical staff, and encourage anyone with any information to contact the Times at (804) 530-8527. |