Report: Northport VA hospital had unlicensed trainees

The Northport Veterans Affairs Medical Center allowed unlicensed trainees in its nuclear medicine department to practice medicine, in violation of state and federal regulations, according to an inspector general's report released Friday.

The 17-page report also said the medical center ran a residency program in the department for doctors in training for nearly three years while the program was unaccredited.

"Because the medical center's nuclear medicine residency program was no longer accredited and the trainee physicians were not licensed but were nevertheless engaged in clinical activities, medical center officials were permitting the trainees to practice medicine without proper licensure," the report read.

As a result of the inquiry, Northport discontinued the residency program in June and dismissed two trainees, including one who had been seeing patients at Northport since 2006.

A Northport spokesman said Friday that although the report was factual, patients were never endangered because trainees were always under the supervision of Northport physicians.

"Certified nuclear medicine doctors were taking care of the patients and reading the test results," spokesman Sal Thomas said. "At no time were our veterans put in harm's way."

But the report said trainees "performed the majority of pre-procedure screenings (80 percent)" and that licensed doctors interpreted the results "once a nuclear medicine procedure is completed and the images are developed."

Northport voluntarily withdrew its accreditation as a residency training program on July 1, 2007, after Stony Brook University's medical school and a community hospital ended their affiliation with Northport's nuclear medicine program.

Nuclear medical practitioners inject radioactive material into patients to create diagnostic images, kill diseased tissue or measure blood flow. In fiscal year 2009, Northport performed or interpreted some 4,400 imaging procedures, mostly cardiac stress tests and bone density scans.

Last year, a VA hospital in Philadelphia came under heavy criticism when it botched 92 of 116 prostate cancer treatments involving the injection of radioactive pellets.

The Northport investigation began after a whistle-blower contacted the inspector general's office alleging, among other things, that a patient died during a cardiac stress test. The inspector general's office dismissed that incident as unrelated, because it happened two years before the residency program's accreditation ended. Calls to the inspector general's regional office in Boston were not returned.

Dr. Mohamed Antar, nuclear medicine chief at Northport, said his program brought the trainees on board because they had previously trained elsewhere and needed to refresh their medical skills before seeking licensure.

He said the whistle-blower was a disgruntled physician dismissed from Northport. The VA should bear some responsibility for the residency program, he said, because it continued to fund the program after Northport withdrew its certification in 2007.

"If there is a mistake, [the VA's Office of] Academic Affiliations is the culprit," Antar said. "Because they continued to fund us."