California Medical Board

The California medical board has reprimanded Michael Jackson's personal physician for failing to notify Nevada medical board officials that he had fallen behind in his child support payments, echoing a previous reprimand issued against the doctor by the Nevada board last year. Dr. Conrad Murray failed to notify the Nevada State Board of Medical Examiners that his child support payments were in arrears as required when he renewed his medical license in 2007 and 2009, according to the California board's public letter of reprimand, filed Friday and made public Monday.

California's medical board Wednesday rejected a judge's recommendation that the Beverly Hills fertility doctor who assisted Nadya Suleman in conceiving octuplets be allowed to keep his medical license. Dr. Michael Kamrava has been accused of gross negligence and incompetence in his treatment of Suleman, 35, of La Habra, and two other female patients: a 48-year-old who suffered complications after she became pregnant with quadruplets and a 42-year-old diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer after receiving fertility treatments.

California's medical board is less likely than those in other states to revoke doctors' licenses or take other serious disciplinary action, according to a consumer advocate's report released this week. California ranked 41st among boards in all 50 states and the District of Columbia in taking serious disciplinary action against doctors last year, according to the report released Monday by Public Citizen, a Washington-based consumer group. The report, based on Federation of State Medical Boards figures, defined serious discipline as license revocations, surrenders, suspensions and probation or restrictions.

Less than a month after Dr. Andrew Rutland was barred from performing surgeries after an abortion patient's death, state medical authorities say they caught the physician in an undercover sting apparently violating the court order. For the second time in as many months, state officials are seeking the immediate suspension of the Chula Vista physician's license. A hearing is set for Thursday in San Diego. Rutland could not be reached for comment. His lawyer, Paul M. Hittelman, said Rutland did nothing to violate the court's order.

The California Medical Board put a doctor with a flawed disciplinary history in charge of monitoring another troubled doctor who, while under supervision, allegedly mishandled an abortion leading to a patient's death. On Tuesday, the board acknowledged it had made a mistake. The regulators violated their own rules by naming Dr. Christopher Dotson Jr., a West Los Angeles-based obstetrician-gynecologist who had recently emerged from administrative probation, to supervise the probation of Andrew Rutland, an Orange County obstetrician.

The Medical Board of California has accused a Beverly Hills fertility doctor of a pattern of gross negligence that led to the birth of Nadya Suleman's 14 children, including the world's longest-surviving octuplets, and created a "stockpile" of unused frozen embryos which serve "no clinical purpose." The 13-page accusation filed in December against Dr. Michael Kamrava paints a picture of 11 years of medical care in which Suleman returned to Kamrava's office again and again to undergo fertility treatments.

The California Medical Board has accused the former head of UCI Medical Center's anesthesiology department of gross negligence and incompetence after he allegedly falsified records and assigned a resident to operating-room duties even though his left hand was in a cast. If the charges are upheld, Dr. Peter H. Breen, who still practices at the Orange-based hospital, could be suspended or have his license revoked.

The Medical Board of California is seeking to revoke or suspend the license of a San Francisco transplant surgeon accused of administering substantial quantities of pain medication to a prospective organ donor. Dr. Hootan Roozrokh also faces trial in October on a felony charge of dependent adult abuse in the death of 25-year-old Ruben Navarro, who suffered from a wasting neurological condition and was comatose.

Fewer doctors were disciplined in California in 2007 than the previous year, causing the state to fall in a nationwide ranking a consumer group released Tuesday. California ranked 36th in the nation in disciplinary actions against doctors, which include the revocation, surrender and suspension of medical licenses, according to a report released by Public Citizen, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit consumer advocacy group. The previous year, Public Citizen ranked California 27th in the nation.

Doctors who abuse alcohol or drugs should no longer be allowed to enroll in a confidential, state-monitored rehabilitation program, the president of the Medical Board of California said at a summit Thursday. In remarks to a group of 100 people, Dr. Richard Fantozzi signaled that he was in no mood to compromise with the California Medical Assn. and other physicians' groups, which have urged that substance-abusing doctors continue to be allowed to enroll in such a program.