While the Medical Council of NSW remains tight-lipped on the outcome of an urgent hearing regarding complaints against Charlie Teo, the controversial neurosurgeon issued a press release on Friday pre-empting any official findings.
The statement from “Professor Dr Charles Teo” said he “accepted the Medical Council’s direction to consult with another neurosurgeon on two rare types of surgery and will also have retrospective discussions with a colleague to review outcomes.”
Dr Charlie Teo faced an urgent hearing of authorities following complaints.Credit:Elesa Kurtz
His statement also claimed that the Medical Council had “agreed” that over the last six months Dr Teo had put in place “an advanced set of advanced [sic] office procedures, which are expected to become the benchmark for good administrative practice for surgeons.”
Already the subject of an investigation by the Health Care Complaints Commission (HCCC), on Thursday Dr Teo had to front an urgent hearing before the Medical Council.
Hearings before the “immediate action panel” of the Medical Council are convened when allegations against a practitioner are of such seriousness that the health and safety of the public might be at risk.
The council can act to either suspend or impose restrictions on a doctor’s registration to protect the public while the HCCC investigation is completed.
As of late Friday, no conditions had been placed on Dr Teo’s registration and the Medical Council said it had “nothing further to add at this time.”
In his press release Dr Teo said he believed his treatment of patients, “who suffer from extremely rare, complicated and terminal brain cancers” had always been in line with local and international standards of care. The neurosurgeon said he “welcomes greater transparency of his office procedures.”
However, the famed neurosurgeon is known to bristle at any criticism. The Herald has obtained a recent email exchange between Dr Teo and other neurosurgeons at Prince of Wales Private Hospital during an audit of patient outcomes.
On receiving an anonymised spreadsheet for a Morbidity and Mortality (M&M) audit at the hospital, Dr Teo demanded that the document be withdrawn immediately as the suggestion that any of his patients had suffered “a post-op haemorrhage” was “potentially defamatory and slanderous.”
When colleagues tried to placate Dr Teo, he replied to them by email that “unwanted” colleagues are “persecuted” by fellow neurosurgeons.
“One of the most powerful tools that the accuser uses against the victim is sham peer review after false reporting of fabricated complications,” he said in the email.
He also criticised medical governing bodies in which “one is presumed guilty, stripped of one’s earning capacity and suspended from clinical duties until he/she is able to prove one’s innocence.”
“Any one of us could fall victim to the malice of a colleague who could use an audit showing disproportionately high complication rates to report us (anonymously !!!) to a governing body, hence setting the process in motion, a process that drags on for years at enormous emotional and financial cost to the innocent victim,” he said in his email.
Meanwhile, the University of NSW said that Dr Teo was no longer entitled to call himself a “Conjoint Professor of Neurosurgery” as that appointment has lapsed.
Kate McClymont is an investigative journalist at The Sydney Morning Herald.
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2021-08-20 07:56:33Z
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