Dodgy doc Ravi Sondhi likely to escape criminal charges (From Your Local Guardian)

Dodgy doc Ravi Sondhi likely to escape criminal charges

7:00am Saturday 4th February 2012 in Health

A dishonest doctor who took £100,000 from an out-of-hours GP service and ignored patients waiting for urgent treatment could escape criminal charges.

A damning report released last week revealed Dr Ravi Sondhi severely abused the Croydoc service, which treated nearly one million out-of-hours patients in south west London.

In a catalogue of shameful actions, Dr Sondhi was found to have withdrawn over £100,000 from Croydoc without authority; provided the out-of-hours service for south west London patients from his home in Norfolk and repeatedly failed to answer telephone calls when he was on call, including one occasion when 114 calls were logged to his phone overnight.

Croydon North MP Malcolm Wicks has called on the Secretary of State to call in the police to undertake a criminal investigation.

And it is understood NHS Southwest London is exploring options with police.

But the Croydon Guardian understands as the money was taken from a private limited company which no longer exists, there is no fraud to investigate meaning Sondhi could escape criminal proceedings.

The 65-page NHS report described how Dr Sondhi built himself an empire through lying, intimidation and charm and became almost untouchable as other board members feared to cross him.

It detailed how Dr Sondhi took between one-and-a-half and three hours to respond to urgent calls when the standard target was 20 minute; failed to record his actions following out of hours calls, with over 250 “unresulted” calls listed; repeatedly cancelled his shifts without warning and took substantial sums of money from his own practice staff, who believed he was investing it on their behalf.

The report said the Croydoc board failed to take action and the commissioning bodies (the Primary Care Trusts) failed “satisfactorily to monitor” the Croydoc contract.

Dr Dave Finch, joint medical director of NHS South West London, the new body for the individual PCTS, said he accepted the failings but no PCT staff would be disciplined.

Dr Sondhi has since been declared bankrupt, suspended and is awaiting a General Medical Council hearing into his conduct.

Croydoc was closed as a company and the out-of-hours service Patient Care 24 took over providing the service.

Dr Finch apologised for the failings and said he was “angry and shocked” by the findings of the report.

He said: “I don’t want to defend what happened. It was appalling. But we are being open and honest about it.

“We want to learn from this.

“We are confident that Patient Care 24 is providing an effective service to patients, but we take our responsibility to monitor its contract extremely seriously in the light of this report.”