Optometrist suspended for amending patient records

Nottingham-based optometrist Alpesh Bhundia has been handed a nine-month suspension by a GOC fitness to practise committee after a panel heard he made a series of amendments to patient records following a complaint.

The amendments first followed the receipt of a complaint made to the practice by the patient’s mother, then again following notification from the GOC of a fitness to practise investigation.

In deciding sanction, the committee, chaired by Pamela Ormerod, said: ‘The committee was concerned with two occasions on which the registrant had amended patient records by adding, long after the event, plausible details of which he had no independent recollection. The purpose of the additions was to protect himself in the face of a patient complaint and an investigation by the GOC.’