Marin Independent Journal (Marin, CA)

January 17, 2006 Tuesday

Mill Valley doctor’s license suspended for misconduct

BYLINE: Richard Halstead

SECTION: MARIN

LENGTH: 539 words

A retired Mill Valley psychiatrist has surrendered his license for at least three years after the Medical Board of California ruled that he was guilty of unprofessional conduct and gross negligence in his treatment of another Mill Valley resident.
According to state documents, Dr. Michael Joseph Dietrick, 62, was grossly negligent in treating the patient in light of his long-term personal and business relationships with the patient’s father and other members of his family.
The patient and his family invested more than $200,000 in a telecommunications company, Relay Systems Inc., which employed Dietrick as a consultant. The patient invested more than $75,000 in the company.
Medical Board documents say Dietrick, who practiced psychiatry for 31 years, was negligent in allowing a treatment relationship and a business relationship with the patient to co-exist for months during the course of treatment. The board also chastised Dietrick for prescribing benzodiazepine, a potentially addictive drug often used to treat anxiety, to a patient with a history of substance abuse and alcohol abuse, suicide threats and severe paranoid disorder.
The board wrote that after the patient filed a complaint about Dietrick that Dietrick sent an e-mail threatening the patient and his entire family if it was not withdrawn. The board called the e-mail “an extreme departure from the standard of medical and psychiatric practice.”
Dietrick disputes many of the allegations made in the Medical Board decision. He says he agreed to surrender his license rather than spend the money required to mount an effective defense.
“It could have cost up to $100,000,” said Dietrick, who retired in 2000.
Dietrick said he never encouraged his patient to invest in Relay Systems and was unaware that he had done so. To the contrary, Dietrick said he warned the patient’s family not to allow him to invest in the company.
“I knew his personal history and that he lacked the competency to manage such an investment,” Dietrick said.
Dietrick said he took the patient on as a favor to the family. Medical Board documents state that Dietrick began treating the patient after the patient had a violent argument with this father, threatened to kill his father, physically assaulted him and threatened suicide.
Dietrick said he believed benzodiazepine was an appropriate medication for the patient because his substance and alcohol abuse had occurred a number of years earlier.
The medical board noted that Dietrick retained no treatment records for the patient. Dietrick said the records were lost in a move. Dietrick said the e-mail was sent after the patient threatened to kill him.
Dietrick does, however, concede that he made one error. When he became a consultant for Relay Systems, the company’s founder, a Pacific Grove resident, was his patient. Dietrick said he considered his consultancy to be part of the patient’s therapy. The company has since gone out of business, he said.
“I crossed the line and served a dual role for this person,” Dietrick said. “I helped him with both his therapeutic issues and his business issues, in my mind thinking they were the same thing. The state did not agree with me about that.”