OMP is struck off for falsifying NHS forms

An ophthalmic medical practitioner has been removed from the GMC's register after defrauding the NHS.

Dr Abdur Razzaq was found guilty of serious professional misconduct by a General Medical Council fitness to practise panel after signing two NHS eye test voucher forms for patients who had not had tests.

The panel heard that Dr Razzaq worked at Eagle Eyes Opticians in Wandsworth and on September 27 2000 Heroda Berhane, then 18, visited him to buy fashion contact lenses.

Berhane, who is profoundly deaf, gave evidence to the panel that she was asked to sign a form by a man she presumed to be the optician. She queried this, but he was insistent, and in her evidence she accepted she signed the form without reading it.

The panel found she did not have an eye test on this and a subsequent visit to the practice. Razzaq's signature was on the record card detailing the eye test he claimed to have undertaken in 2000.

However, a sight test Berhane had at a different opticians on June 16 2005 revealed there was a significant difference between the recordings of her visual acuity.

According to a consultant ophthalmologist expert witness, if the record of the examination at Eagle Eyes was truthful, 'it would be most unlikely that her sight would have improved so significantly in the five intervening years'.

Berhane told the panel that she had always had good vision, a fact supported by the more recent test, but contradicted by Razzaq's records.

The panel heard Razzaq signed another NHS optical voucher on October 18 2000 certifying he had tested the sight of Rikard Rupasinghe - aged 13 at the time - and that the outlet declared it had supplied him spectacles at £29.30 nearly a month later.

However, his mother, Kushmalie Rupasinghe, gave evidence that her son had never worn spectacles, and has no vision problem. It was also accepted that Rupasinghe had never taken her son to Eagle Eyes or signed any GOS forms in respect of him.

A marked lack of any information about the 'patient' on the record card was noted by the panel. It did not accept Razzaq's explanation that he had forgotten to add these details as he was hurried by the patient and those accompanying him. The panel concluded that this sight test was also a fabrication.

In its statement it said: 'The panel has concluded that your behaviour has been such that it is fundamentally incompatible with your continuing to be a registered doctor and it has determined that the only appropriate sanction in this case is to direct that your name be erased from the Medical Register.'

Razzaq was given 28 days to appeal.  

Read the GMC's full determination here.