By Greg Groeller, The Orlando Sentinel, Fla. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Jun. 6--Becky Cherney, Central Florida's well-known health care crusader, is resigning from the state Board of Medicine, in part because the board didn't revoke the license of a Volusia County cosmetic surgeon accused of badly botching six procedures.
Cherney said the case, heard by the 15-member board at its bimonthly meeting last weekend in Fort Lauderdale, was symptomatic of its ineffectiveness in disciplining dangerous doctors.
'We are a sorry board,' said Cherney, who said she sent a resignation letter Tuesday to Gov. Jeb Bush.
The resignation ends nearly eight years of board service by Cherney, president of the Central Florida Health Care Coalition, which negotiates managed-care contracts for the region's largest employers. She was one of three consumer representatives who with 12 doctors sit in judgment of Florida physicians accused of wrongdoing.
Cherney, said she was incensed by the case of Madhusudan Parikh, an Ormond Beach cosmetic surgeon accused of horribly disfiguring the faces of five women and of botching a liposuction that may have led to the death of another patient.
The board voted unanimously Friday to accept a recommendation by lawyers for the state Agency for Health Care Administration, which investigates doctors, to fine Parikh $10,000 and have him reimburse the state $11,554 in investigative costs. Parikh also must attend 25 hours of plastic-surgery training, and his medical license was placed on probation for one year.
Cherney, whose tenure has often been marked by fierce disagreements with other board members over disciplinary actions, thought the board should have taken Parikh's medical license away from him.
'I'd be so embarrassed if I ever had to face those five women,' said Cherney, who was recused from voting on Parikh's penalty because she was part of a smaller Board of Medicine panel that had reviewed Parikh's case earlier in the disciplinary process.
Bill Parizek, a board spokesman, defended the board's disciplinary record.
'The Board of Medicine has been very focused on improving the disciplinary process by taking swift action against doctors who have complaints filed against them,' Parizek said.
Cherney's resignation won't be official until it is received and processed by Bush's appointments office, Parizek added. He said several board members had tried to dissuade Cherney from resigning.
'She's a valuable member of the board,' Parizek said.
The late Gov. Lawton Chiles appointed Cherney to the board in 1994 and again in 1998. Cherney said she won't serve out the remainder of her second four-year term, which is up in October.
She said she is proud of some of the things the board has accomplished during her tenure, such as developing zero-tolerance policies for doctors who have sex with patients, abuse drugs or are involved in insurance fraud. But
too often, she said, the board has handed down punishments that failed to match the seriousness of the doctors' actions.
'For a doctor, a $5,000 fine isn't even a week's pay,' Cherney said. 'The message should be that, if you come before the board, you are really going to get it. And we aren't sending that message.'
Cherney isn't the first to criticize the board's disciplinary record. Last month, Public Citizen, a watchdog group founded by Ralph Nader, ranked Florida among those states that take the fewest disciplinary actions against doctors.
At the time, Cherney faulted the study's methodology. But on Tuesday she said she was dismayed later by her defense of the board.
'I thought, `You're hanging out with the doctors too much,' ' Cherney said. 'They always attack the methodology of these studies. This study should be telling us something. Who wants to be below average?'
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(c) 2001. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
