By: Kate Farrish
The state Medical Examining Board on Tuesday fined a Milford psychiatrist $15,000 for sending personal texts to a patient and suspended a Watertown doctor’s medical license for 20 years for violating her probation.
In addition to the fine, the psychiatrist, Dr. Ljudmil Kljusev, was reprimanded for inviting the female patient in 2007 to meet him at a restaurant, for sending her personal texts and for calling her “Sweety,” state records show.
The board considered the behavior a violation of professional boundaries. The same patient claimed that Kljusev also made sexual advances to her, but the state dismissed that portion of the complaint as unfounded, Diane Wilan, a state Department of Public Health lawyer, said Tuesday.
DPH had also investigated a complaint from another of Kljusev’s patients who said that in 2009, she went to see him at 7:30 p.m. and found his office filled with lit candles, and that he was holding a beer in one hand and then lit a cigar, records show. She got upset and fled, the report indicates.
State officials investigated the complaint, and Kljusev said that visitors had just left his office after bringing him the beer and cigars as a gift. He said he was putting the beer away when the patient arrived and had lit the candles to cover up the smell of the cigar smoke, records show.
The board found there was insufficient evidence to conclude that Kljusev’s office environment was unprofessional.
His lawyer, Trudie Hamilton, asked the board Tuesday to remove the reprimand. She said that Kljusev acknowledged that the text messages were inappropriate but that they were intended to support a “very challenging” patient with a long history of drug abuse. Hamilton said that there was no evidence he had a sexual motive in sending the texts.
The board did not drop the reprimand.
In other action, the board imposed the 20-year suspension and a $5,000 fine on Dr. Mary Jane Brackett, a 77-year-old Watertown doctor, for failing to comply with a 2012 order from the board. State records show she failed to pay a $1,000 fine, provide a physician to monitor her practice or take a course on medical record documentation. The suspension can be lifted if she completes the course.
The board also reprimanded Brackett for having a loud argument and a physical struggle with the mother of a patient in 2011. Brackett was arrested in connection with that incident and was charged with breach of peace but later pleaded guilty to creating a public disturbance, state records show.
Brackett also received probation for one year for failing to take enough continuing medical education courses and a reprimand for failing to have malpractice insurance for six months in 2012, state records show.
The 2012 sanctions were imposed on Brackett for making a false accusation against a patient’s father to state child protection officials.
David Tilles, a DPH lawyer, said Brackett was mailed a notice of Tuesday’s meeting but it was sent back to the department with the word “refused” written on it in black crayon.
Dr. Louis Telesford of Hamden was fined $5,000 and his license was placed on probation for five years for using the name of another doctor to prescribe drugs during 2009 and 2010. In 2002, Telesford pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute controlled substances outside the scope of a medical practice, DPH records show.
The board placed a permanent restriction barring him in 2002 from prescribing controlled substances unless he met certain conditions. Tuesday’s action included lifting that restriction but requiring him to have a physician monitor his patient records.
The board also fined Dr. Naimetulla Syed of Glastonbury $5,000 for billing insurance for patient visits in 2010 that never took place, records show. The board also reprimanded him, placed his license on a six-month probation and ordered him to take a course in chart documentation. It fined him another $500 for failing to take enough continuing medical education courses.
Dr. Jeffrey Schorr of Greenwich was fined $3,000 and reprimanded for prescribing painkillers such as oxycodone to two friends between 2010 and 2012 without keeping adequate medical records on the patients, DPH records show. Schorr was also found to have improperly stored old patient records in a garage in New York state to which a neighbor had access.
Under a consent order with Schorr, the board placed his license on probation for a year and ordered him to take coursework on patient privacy and record keeping. Records show he has agreed not to prescribe drugs for himself, relatives or friends and has destroyed the old patient records.
Finally, the board issued a cease and desist order stopping Divina M. Jaquez from practicing medicine without a license at her business, Divina’s Beauty Salon, in Hartford. In 2012, DPH got a complaint from a doctor that Jaquez was performing “abdominal fat reduction” and weight loss services at the salon.
Inspectors from DPH and the state Department of Consumer Protection found medicines such as antibiotics at the salon, where Jaquez was using a “vacuumlipo” machine that purported to remove abdominal fat, records show.
In July of this year, Jaquez signed a consent order in which she admitted unauthorized possession of the drugs and that she has practiced medicine without a license. Matthew Antonetti, a DPH lawyer, said there was no evidence that liposuction was being performed at the hair salon.
