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This article appeared on the front page of today's Cape Cod Times. www.capecodonline.com
The ID doctor referred to in the artical is rabid about people getting treatment beyond the IDSA guidelines. He has denied patients with lyme who show up at the Cape Cod Hospital for prescribed IV treatment in the infusion room. He's also done great harm to many lyme patients referred to him because he is the hospital ID specialist. nan
Cape doctor fighting 11 complaints to state
By CYNTHIA McCORMICK STAFF WRITER
HYANNIS - A local physician facing an investigation by the state Board of Registration in Medicine has agreed to stop practicing while on maternity leave.
Dr. Neena Chaturvedi: Confident that issues with the medical board will be resolved.
Dr. Neena Chaturvedi, who is due to have her second child next month, came to a voluntary agreement with the state board Sept. 27, when she stopped seeing patients.
''The purpose was to use this time to ascertain (the) veracity of unproven allegations and implement and document resolutions, if any, to everyone's mutual satisfaction, so she may continue to provide excellent care to her patients,'' her husband, Dr. Rahul Chaturvedi, said in a written statement.
Neena Chaturvedi still has her medical license, but her agreement not to practice while on maternity leave comes at a time when the Cape already is suffering a dearth of primary care physicians.
''We're still several primary care physicians short of where we'd like to be on the Cape,'' said David Reilly, spokesman for Cape Cod Healthcare Inc., which includes Cape Cod Hospital.
Chaturvedi, an internist with Physician Medical Centers at 100 Independence Drive, is on the consulting staff at Cape Cod Hospital.
A copy of her voluntary agreement with the medical board shows she faces 11 open complaints.
Russell Aims, spokesman for the Board of Registration in Medicine, said he could not comment on the nature of the complaints.
But Rahul Chaturvedi, who owns Physician Medical Centers with his wife, said some of the complaints emanated from Cape Cod Hospital itself.
In a press conference he called last evening, Rahul Chaturvedi said the hospital's infectious disease consultant disagreed with Neena Chaturvedi's aggressive treatment of a patient's Lyme disease with long-term use of antibiotics, although some physicians consider that a standard treatment protocol.
In another case, he said his wife was disciplined for lack of responsiveness to a page by nursing staff, although it was determined she was not on call that night.
''This is an emotionally scarring thing,'' Rahul Chaturvedi said. He alleged the hospital's complaints came about after he talked about the possibility of suing doctors at Cape Cod Hospital following the January death of his father.
''We're the largest non-hospital facility on Cape Cod,'' Rahul Chaturvedi said. The practice, he said, which includes three other active physicians besides himself, is one of the largest MassHealth providers in the county.
One of the worst aspects of the situation, the couple alleges, is misinformation spread among area pharmacies about whether to honor Neena Chaturvedi's prescriptions. They said patients can refill without new prescriptions.
''The way it was handled and the way it created panic among people, that was bothersome,'' said Neena Chaturvedi. She said she is confident the issues with the medical board will be resolved and she'll be able to return to work after a two-to three-month maternity leave.
Patient Patricia Yetman of West Yarmouth said she'll wait for her. ''I love her,'' said Yetman, who was seeing one of Rahul Chaturvedi's associates last evening. ''She's very careful, very thorough. She's the kind that actually looks at you and listens to you.''
Reilly said he had no comment on the death of Rahul Chaturvedi's father.
''We wouldn't comment about a specific patient case anyway,'' he said.
Other complaints filed with the medical board against Neena Chaturvedi concern patient delays in getting medical records, according to the couple.
After completing its investigation, the Board of Registration in Medicine could take disciplinary action or close the complaints with no action, Aims said. Disciplinary actions run the gamut from imposing a fine to revoking a doctor's license.
According to her physician profile, which was pulled from the state board's Web site after the voluntary agreement, Neena Chaturvedi went to Maulana Azad Medical College in India and completed a residency program at St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester. She is board certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine.
-------------------- nan Posts: 2135 | From Tick Country | Registered: Oct 2000
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Lyme patients on the Cape who have had adverse experiences at this hospital should be filing their own complaints with the state medical board and visiting their legislators to stop this before it costs this doctor a bundle and they lose her services entirely.
After all, this is the medical board that ignored a whole pile of complaints against Allen Steere. That should be pointed out to legislators; that the board is biased and cannot be relied on to tell good medicine from bad when it comes to Lyme (or possibly anything else).
Legislators oversee state bureaucracies; involve them. If they know complaints are filed against the ID at this hospital and being ignored by the board, while they go after this good doc, it will be obvious something else is going on.
And I hope Cape Lyme patients are writing letters to the newspaper about this ID at the hospital. I think the hospital could rein him in if it looked like they were getting a lot of bad publicity. And just in case the newspaper does not print all the letters they receive, which is the usual situation, copies of those letters should be sent to the head guy at the hospital.
Posts: 8430 | From Not available | Registered: Oct 2000
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I wonder if the day will come when LLMD's have lyme patients sign contracts saying that they understand there are two standards of care and waive their right to sue the docs who treat more aggressively.
This may keep them safe from medical boards...I would sign it to get more aggressive care!
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The Fibromyalgia and Fatigue Centers are moving away from being so aggresive in using the clinical diagnosis of lyme as part of their protocol. (That is my understanding anyway.)
They will still test with Igenex and treat with abx (thankfully mine was VERY positive). I'm sure its from all these lawsuits that they've had to take a more conservative stance.
I don't know where that leaves those whose tests come out negative and who do, in fact, have lyme.
I still think they are wonderful as far as testing for viruses, bacteria, hormones - they use bio-identical hormones to get your body stablized and Heparin to help with hypercoagulation but those whose lyme test results are "iffy", I'm afraid they will slip through the cracks.
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