By Lisa Backus
The state Medical Examining Board agreed Tuesday to fine two doctors $5,000 each and issued a cease and desist order to a woman without a Connecticut medical license who performed a procedure that led to an infection.
Dr. Bryan Boffi, of Avon, a psychiatrist at the Hospital of Central Connecticut, was fined $5,000 and his license was reprimanded after he issued a patient a prescription for Ativan, a sedative, without consulting with the person’s regular mental health clinician, documents said.
Boffi cared for the patient while the person was admitted to HOCC’s psychiatric ward in May of 2016, but failed to talk to the person’s out-patient psychiatrist about the patient’s history or inpatient treatment strategy before prescribing the medication, a consent order said.
The state Department of Public Health (DPH) began investigating Boffi after receiving a complaint from the patient’s family, papers said. Boffi has since completed 150 hours of continuing education in the treatment of depression, addiction and the use of Benzodiazepines, such as Ativan, DPH officials said.
The board also agreed to discipline anesthesiologist Dr. Glen Rosenfeld, of West Hartford, with a $5,000 fine after he admitted that he had performed a nerve block on the wrong eye of a patient in October of 2016 and a nerve block on the wrong leg in a second patient in 2017.
He was working at Bristol Hospital as an anesthesiologist at the time and is still working there, according to state officials.
A New Haven woman has agreed to not practice medicine without a Connecticut medical license after she conducted three procedures to remove fluid from a patient who later suffered an infection, documents said.
Lillian Ruiz-Estrepo was listed as a “college graduated nurse in Columbia” in DPH papers. But she had no medical license while working for Pelle Dolce Aesthetics in June of 2019, according to the DPH.
Over a two-week period, Ruiz-Estrepo removed excess fluid with a syringe three separate times that had built up in the abdomen of a woman who recently had surgery, documents said. The woman wound up with an infection as a result of the procedures, documents said.
DPH was notified of the incident in July of 2019. Ruiz-Estrepo told DPH investigators that the woman was not scheduled to see a doctor for another week and she felt bad for the patient so she agreed to remove the fluid, documents said.
The board also agreed to reinstate the medical license of Dr. Sarita Mallya, of California, who is seeking to return to psychiatry after a four-year absence following two serious automobile accidents. She is returning to Connecticut to practice psychiatry at the Capitol Region Mental Health Center, she said.
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