By Jacques Gallant - Toronto Star - 10.11.2023 - [CANADA] - [Javad Peirovy] A Toronto doctor who has been suspended three times — including for sexually abusing female patients — has “greatly” harmed the reputation of the medical profession and is at “high risk” of losing his licence, a discipline tribunal said Friday.
Dr. Javad Peirovy was suspended for seven months in September for failing to abide by the conditions on his licence, including that he not see female patients without a chaperone approved by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario.
Those conditions were imposed as a result of his sexual abuse of four female patients, which led to a six-month suspension in 2016. He was also suspended in 2019 for two months for giving his personal cell number to a young female patient whom he then dated for over a year.
On Friday morning, the currently suspended Peirovy was reprimanded by a discipline tribunal panel for his latest round of professional misconduct. He sat at a table with his arms crossed, nodding occasionally, as panel member Dr. Roy Kirkpatrick delivered the reprimand during the virtual hearing.
“Your now extensive disciplinary record, involving multiple types of misconduct, greatly harms the reputation of this profession and the public’s trust,” Kirkpatrick said.
“Given your multiple findings of misconduct and their nature, you’re at high risk of having your certificate of registration revoked if you appear before this tribunal again and misconduct is found.”
The only reason the reprimand was not delivered at Peirovy’s discipline hearing in September was because the doctor was a no-show, with his lawyer indicating he wasn’t feeling well. Peirovy was charged $1,000 for Friday’s five-minute hearing, on top of the $6,000 he was ordered to pay for the September hearing.
A different discipline panel previously found that Peirovy sexually abused four female patients by cupping their breasts or tweaking their nipples with no medical reason to do so, while practising at a walk-in clinic. Peirovy had also pleaded guilty in criminal court to simple assault on two patients after initially being charged with sexual assault. He received a conditional discharge — meaning no criminal record — and probation.
The discipline panel decided to suspend him for six months for sexual abuse, rather than revoke his licence at the urging of college prosecutors. The college unsuccessfully fought all the way to the Ontario Court of Appeal to strip Peirovy of his licence.
Yet when he was found in September to have violated the conditions imposed as a direct result of that sexual abuse, the college joined with Peirovy’s lawyer in asking the panel to order a seven-month suspension, which they did.
“I have zero confidence in the college,” one of Peirovy’s victims, Temerra Dixon, told the Star in September. “It is a joke to me, to put it lightly.”
Medical malpractice lawyer Paul Harte pointed out on Friday that the college’s “primary function is public safety” and said the regulator should have again pushed for revocation.
“Isn’t it three strikes and you’re out?” said Harte, who is not involved with the case. “The college needs to essentially do everything in their power to have the public protected, and in this case, revocation appears to be the only way that they can genuinely ensure that.
“They’re there to advocate on behalf of the public, and it’s unclear to me why it would be in the public interest to give him another period of suspension.”
The college has said that it deals with each case on an individual basis, depending on the facts and the law.
Peirovy’s lawyer entered a plea of no contest at the September hearing, meaning he doesn’t admit guilt but consents to the panel accepting the allegations as fact.
As part of routine compliance monitoring, the college selected 10 of Peirovy’s patients at random from a certain period of time in 2020, and discovered three female patients had appointments in the absence of the college-approved chaperone, while two others said they had had multiple appointments and that the chaperone would sometimes leave the room.
The college cancelled its approval of the chaperone — barring Peirovy from seeing female patients — but he then brought on a new practice monitor without first getting the college’s approval. He saw about eight female patients in a single day in that chaperone’s presence.
Peirovy twice denied to college investigators that he saw those patients and a patient log from that day has never been turned over to the regulator as required, the tribunal found.
And a sign that Peirovy is required to post in his waiting room indicating the conditions on his licence was folded — so that its contents weren’t visible — on at least two days in November 2021 when college investigators made random visits. Signs were also not posted in some examination rooms.
“You betrayed the trust of your patients, and the public, and the college, and your practice monitor,” Kirkpatrick told Peirovy on Friday.
In the wake of Peirovy’s sexual abuse case and others, the former provincial government brought in a new law that added groping to the acts of sexual abuse requiring the automatic revocation of a physician’s licence.
If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this article, you can contact Dignity4Patients, whose helpline is open Monday to Thursday 10am to 4pm.
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