Perth doctor falsified medical prescription to cover tracks
A Perth doctor previously banned from treating women after assaulting his ex-girlfriend has now been fined $10,000 for prescribing himself testosterone injections.
Dr Kenneth Lee was allowed to keep practising despite initially being suspended by the Medical Board of Australia in September 2020 over the allegations.
In 2022, he pleaded guilty to one count of common assault and was fined $5000.
His suspension had been lifted before he faced Perth Magistrate’s Court however, conditions were attached to his reinstatement.
One of the conditions was that he could only treat men. Another required him to advise patients of his criminal history ahead of their appointment and a third condition prohibited him from self-prescribing medicines.
It was the second time he’d been banned from self-prescribing — the first being in 2018 after Dr he wrote himself prescriptions between August 2015 and March 2017. On top of that self-prescription ban, Lee was fined $4000.
He successfully had that ban lifted in June 2019, however, within a month Dr Lee visited a Perth pharmacy with prescriptions he wrote for himself on several occasions, according to State Administrative Tribunal documents.
The first two were for Reandron, a medication used to replace the body’s natural hormone testosterone and filled in August and September 2019.
A third was for Armodafanil, a wakefulness-promoting medication, which was being prepared for Dr Lee when a pharmacist noticed the previous ban on his medical registration and instead alerted the medical board.
Dr Lee also self-prescribed Selegiline and Pramipexole, Schedule 4 drugs used to treat symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.
To try and cover up his tracks, Dr Lee obtained a handwritten prescription for Armodafinil from a consultant psychiatrist and changed its date and attached it to a letter denying his actions to the medical board.
Despite the latest blight on his record, Dr Lee received another chance this month, walking away with his medical licence intact and instead ordered to pay a $10,000 fine.
The State Administrative Tribunal also forced him to pay the medical board’s $5000 in legal fees.
The SAT decision comes almost three years after Dr Lee was granted a spent conviction by Perth’s Magistrates Court after admitting he gave his estranged partner a “backhander” as he drove her home — and then pushed her over when they got there.
In 2022, the then-45-year-old was due to go to trial over the incident, committed against his then-girlfriend during their “toxic” 18-month relationship, but pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated common assault after a string of other domestic violence charges were dropped.
After news of the assault, which Dr Lee failed to report to the medical board within the required seven days, his medical licence was suspended.
In its decision to reinstate Dr Lee almost two years later, the tribunal sided with the medical board in accepting Dr Lee posed a “serious risk of psychological harm to victims of abuse” that he saw in a clinical setting.
But the tribunal did not accept Dr Lee “posed a risk to women generally”, and that the condition requiring him to disclose his criminal history sufficed.
That condition, as well as the requirement he inform patients of his criminal history, was revoked by the medical board three months ago.
It is understood that at the time of publication, Dr Lee’s registration was subject to no conditions.
The medical board has been contacted for comment.