Winnipeg doctor loses licence for professional misconduct

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This article was published 18/10/2022 (755 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba’s physician watchdog has stripped a Winnipeg doctor of his licence after finding him guilty of “serious” professional misconduct.

Dr. Leonard Lockman, a family doctor and medical director and owner of the St. Vital Family Medical and Walk-In Clinic, was found guilty following a discipline panel hearing in April of charges relating to improper prescribing, billing and record-keeping.

The conduct occurred between January 2011 and September 2020, according to the 79-page decision, signed Aug. 23 and recently posted on the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba’s website.

“By failing to treat, manage or follow up on medical conditions adequately, he failed to practice medicine competently,” read a statement from registrar Dr. Anna Ziomek. “He caused some of his patients harm by making unsupported diagnoses and inaccurate, unclear, and inappropriate patient records that could be damaging to them for years to come.”

Ziomek said the “seriousness, frequency, and patterns” of the matters are “detrimental and insulting to honest physicians and to the public’s trust in the medical profession.”

Lockman’s lawyers did not respond to a request for comment by deadline Wednesday.

Lockman, a physician with 30 years of experience, was previously disciplined by the college in 2015 for sending patients to the ER without properly assessing them himself.

At the April hearing, Lockman was accused of poor and inaccurate record-keeping, making “inappropriate” claims for insured services and falsely documenting clinical visits, creating an “unethical” system for billing insured services, behaving unprofessionally with a patient and their family member, displaying a lack of skill, knowledge and judgement in treating another patient, and committing professional misconduct when dealing with a fellow doctor.

One expert who provided evidence to the hearing panel and reviewed Lockman’s records said there were “several instances” where the physician “does not appear to be paying appropriate attention to medications he prescribes.”

“Lockman has notes which are disorganized, use frequently repetitive phrases which likely do not represent the care provided and are missing crucial aspects of adequate medical records, such as management plans,” said Dr. Alex Singer, an associate professor with the University of Manitoba’s department of family medicine.

Regarding his billing practices, Singer said: “There are several examples of patient interviews that confirm that some what Dr. Lockman claimed was the justification for his billing practices was not only inconsistent with the documentation but also the care provided.”

In one “serious” case, Lockman prescribed a 71-year-old woman a muscle relaxant for a hip injury, but did not make notes about its potential side effects, including sedation.

The patient had a series of falls and was admitted to hospital. The attending physician who treated the woman wrote to Lockman, saying they had “significant concerns” about the “massive amount” of drugs the patient was on.

“This borders on malpractice,” the doctor wrote.

In another case, Lockman lashed out when the daughter-in-law of a 70-year-old patient with Parkinson’s disease used her phone to try to find information about a recent medication change.

“This caused Dr. Lockman to raise his voice, telling her she could not do that and he stood to leave the room. Patient 5 received no medical services from Dr. Lockman as a result and was asked to leave within five minutes of the appointment beginning,” reads the decision.

Lockman terminated the patient-physician relationship, saying the patient’s Parkinson’s was stable. Two weeks after the visit, the patient was hospitalized due to advancing Parkinson’s.

Lockman was not present at the hearing. Via his lawyer, he pleaded guilty to all charges, with the exception of one: “By reason of one or more of the allegations, individually or cumulatively, Dr. Lockman has demonstrated an unfitness to practice medicine.”

However, Lockman was not “contesting” that charge.

The panel found Lockman guilty of all 11 charges on a balance of probabilities. In addition to losing his licence, he must pay the college $40,000.

Lockman is no longer listed on its physician registry. He ceased practicing in May.

However, neither Lockman nor other physicians whose licences were recently revoked appear under the college’s “cancellation of licence” section on its website.

In a statement, college spokesperson Wendy Elias-Gagnon said the only people included in that section are those whose licences are cancelled but not following an inquiry panel hearing.

While physician discipline hearings are public, the public rarely learns of cases of misconduct until the college posts decisions, often months later.

Following an investigation by the Free Press into the college’s secretive handling of cases of physician misconduct earlier this year, the college committed to posting upcoming discipline hearings online, but no such cases are yet posted.

Elias-Gagnon said a new disciplinary and publications database is being added to the website by the end of the week.

katrina.clarke@freepress.mb.ca