GP suspended for inappropriate opioid prescribing, inadequate patient care

05 Sep 2024

A West Australian doctor has been reprimanded, had his registration suspended for five months and had conditions placed on his registration for failing to provide adequate assessment and care of a patient, breaching professional boundaries, as well as inappropriate prescribing and billing practices.

The Medical Board of Australia (the Board) referred Dr Gurpreet Singh Sachdev, a general practitioner, to the State Administrative Tribunal of Western Australia (the tribunal) for professional misconduct for his care and treatment of the patient (CP).

It was alleged that CP attended consultations with Dr Sachdev between 22 January 2017 and 27 June 2019 due to chronic health conditions including headaches, migraines, insomnia, depression and anxiety. Contrary to the professional obligations outlined in the Board’s Good medical practice: a code of conduct for doctors in Australia (the code of conduct), Dr Sachdev failed to adequately assess, investigate and/or diagnose CP in relation to these chronic health conditions.

It was also alleged that Dr Sachdev failed to provide adequate treatment to CP for these health conditions. This included:

• neglecting to refer CP to a neurologist for their headaches/migraines until February 2018, and failing to follow a specialist neurologist’s advice regarding appropriate medications,
• providing CP with opioids, rather than non-steroidal anti-inflammatory pain relief, as a first-line treatment for right loin pain, and
• failing to refer CP to a psychologist, or provide treatment other than medication, for their depression and anxiety.

Dr Sachdev inappropriately prescribed both Schedule 4 and Schedule 8 medications during these consultations, which are restricted medicines due to their potential for patient harm. He failed to obtain information about CP’s prescribing and dispensing history, yet prescribed opioids for CP on 54 occasions during 2017.

By consent of the parties, the Tribunal ordered that ‘throughout the period of the consultations, [Dr Sachdev] prescribed opioids for CP at a frequency that increased CP's risk of medication over-use’. Furthermore, it asserted that Dr Sachdev ‘prescribed a quantity of benzodiazepines and opioids medications for CP that may have given rise to a risk of CP developing medication dependency’.

Over the period of treatment, Dr Sachdev also failed to maintain appropriate professional boundaries with CP and to make and maintain adequate clinical records for his patient. The tribunal also noted that Dr Sachdev engaged in inappropriate billing practices in respect of his treatment of CP, stating that ‘On numerous occasions, CP attended two or three consultations with [Dr Sachdev] on the same day, when there was no clinical justification for him to do so’.

On 9 August 2024, the tribunal ordered that Dr Sachdev:

• be reprimanded,
• have his registration as a medical practitioner suspended for five months from 11 September 2024,
• undergo audits,
• attend mentoring,
• complete education on prescribing, record-keeping and professional boundaries, and
• pay the Board’s costs, fixed in the amount of $21,500.

Read the tribunal’s full decision on the eCourts Portal of Western Australia.