A High Court judge has quashed a tribunal’s decision to allow a doctor who wrote prescriptions for overseas patients without having even basic information about them to continue practising with conditions.1
The Professional Standards Authority, which oversees healthcare regulators, appealed to the court against a decision by a medical practitioners tribunal that imposing conditions was sufficient to tackle the seriousness of Sundara Lingam’s conduct.
Mrs Justice Foster ruled that the tribunal’s “unclear and inadequate” reasoning on sanction amounted to a serious procedural error and sent the case back to the tribunal to reconsider the sanction.
Allowing the appeal, she said, “The panel may be correct concerning proportionality and it is possible that the imposition of conditions, even in an acknowledged serious case where there was insufficient evidence of insight, was within the range of available decisions. But on its face it is not possible to accept …