The New York Law Journal published a front page story about a law victory in convincing a court to strike down a New York Workers’ Compensation Board decision that revoked a doctor’s privileges to treat patients and bill for services governed by the Workers’ Compensation system. In the first round of the battle, we persuaded the court that the Board did not follow proper procedures. In the second victory, the court faced the issue head on, finding that the Board’s conduct was “excessive,” “totally unreasonable,” and an abuse of discretion.
The client had been disciplined by the office of professional medical conduct because he did not retain certain paper records, from a testing machine, akin to a tape roll from an adding machine. The test results had been kept but not the voluminous back-up papers. Our client subsequently purchased expensive digital equipment that saves the back- up data on hard drives, thus, fixing the massive storage problem he had experienced.
The court challenges were mounted by Harold Levy and Evan Schwartz of Schwartz Law. The Law Journal noted that the court was not only persuaded that the revocation of the privileges was excessive, but that there is an apparent issue with the Board’s implementation of a new law allowing the revocation: in every case so far, the doctor’s privileges were revoked entirely, with no discretion having been exercised as to possible appropriate lesser measures taken to address problems.
The article noted that the court ordered the Board to reinstate the doctor’s privileges immediately and that the patient load in question amounted to 20% of his practice.
Evan S. Schwartz
Founder of Schwartz, Conroy & Hack
833-824-5350
[email protected]
