A Melbourne doctor who asked a vulnerable patient for sex while promising to help her get a disability pension has been allowed to keep practising despite a long history of serious complaints to regulators. The general practitioner is still treating patients without conditions on his registration, three and a half years after the latest allegations – and a damning string of text messages – were first brought to the attention of the Medical Board of Australia. A Victorian Civil and Administrative Appeals Tribunal panel recently found the female patient’s complaints against Glenroy-based Dr Hassan Alkazali were proven and constituted four counts of professional misconduct, with a determination on penalty due late next month. The panel accepted evidence that Dr Alkazali had asked the patient for sex over the phone and in dozens of text messages, and had tried to coach her on how to get a disability pension for schizophrenia, despite lacking evidence to reasonably believe she was schizophrenic. The text messages, reproduced in VCAT’s findings, show the doctor had responded to questions about the status of the patient’s pension application with: “But good dr needs good girl to play with.”
