Falsified timesheets get radiologist suspended years after the fact

A U.K. radiologist has received a six-month suspension for taking pay on unworked hours back in 2012 and 2013.

Vascular interventional subspecialist Luke Morgan-Rowe received the relatively mild penalty—an initial action had called for his firing—after owning up to his fraudulent behavior this month.

Representing himself at a medical practitioners’ tribunal, the NHS physician admitted to all charges of filing faked timesheets and apologized for his dishonesty, according to a news item posted Nov. 16 in The BMJ [1].

Morgan-Rowe confessed to harboring a “sense of entitlement and arrogance” when he was a young doctor. He suggested this attitude combined with anxiety over medical-school debt to warp his judgment.

Morgan-Rowe also said he’d intended to work off the hours for which he’d been unduly paid and considered the pay something of an advance, The BMJ reports.

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Describing himself as a ‘different and better person now,’ Morgan-Rowe said he was no longer in financially straitened circumstances and would never repeat his conduct. The General Medical Council’s enforcement actions were the ‘ultimate deterrent,’ he told the [tribunal].”

The tribunal’s chair, Catherine Moxon, remarked that the long time lag between the offenses and the resolution of the case had mitigated punishment in the radiologist’s favor.

She noted the case had taken years to wend its way through the U.K.’s justice system before finally landing with the GMC’s tribunal, The BMJ points out.

“Dr Morgan-Rowe had been tormented by seeing his peers fulfilling what were once joint professional milestones,” Moxon said at the hearing. “He had to accept help from friends and family to pay for his legal fees. He had lost his doctor’s training number and had been diverted from a vocational path into which he and others had put considerable resources.”

Also helping Morgan-Rowe’s plea for a short suspension were favorable references from the hospital at which he’s been working in recent years, along with a letter from his supervisor during 2012 and 2013. The former boss said Morgan-Rowe had “ultimately worked more hours than he claimed payment for.”

In addition, Morgan-Rowe’s verbal contrition may have complemented his request for the tribunal’s leniency due to a shortage of interventional radiologists in the U.K.

Moxon said it was “in the public interest to retain Dr Morgan-Rowe as a competent and clinically useful doctor,” according to The BMJ.

After serving his six-month suspension into 2023, Morgan-Rowe must attend a review hearing before going back to work.

There’s more coverage of the case from the U.K. in the Times of London and the Daily Mail.

Dave Pearson

Dave P. has worked in journalism, marketing and public relations for more than 30 years, frequently concentrating on hospitals, healthcare technology and Catholic communications. He has also specialized in fundraising communications, ghostwriting for CEOs of local, national and global charities, nonprofits and foundations.

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