The Boston Globe
Board censures Framingham psychiatrist
By Dolores Kong, Globe Staff
January 4, 1995

Concluding its longest-running sexual misconduct case ever, the state Board of Registration in Medicine announced yesterday it has censured a Framingham psychiatrist for improperly dealing with a patient in the early 1970s.

After more than a decade of investigating allegations of sexual misconduct, the board found that Jacob Goldberg, a doctor of osteopathy who specializes in psychiatry, exercised poor judgment in allowing “Patient A” to stroke his hair and, at least once, to kiss him on the cheek.

Dr. Goldberg “engaged in these departures from standard practice in spite of his recording in his therapy notes about Patient A’s seductive and provocative behavior towards him,” the board wrote in its 43-page decision. His “tolerance of the ambiguity in the relationship in all likelihood created misunderstandings and improper expectations in a fragile patient.”

But the board said based on the evidence, it could not conclude that Goldberg had a sexual relationship with the patient shortly after ending their doctor-patient relationship.

The long-running case was featured in a recent Globe Spotlight series on medical malpractice and hospital death rates as an example of the board’s delay in acting, although it knew of a $ 287,000 jury award to Patient A in 1983 and it officially opened its investigation in 1987.

Alexander Fleming, executive director of the Board of Registration in Medicine, said the case took so long because the hearing officer who handled the case left the agency in 1991 and had to write this and several other outstanding reports on a part-time basis. Goldberg’s case was the former hearing officer’s last report and lowest priority because she recommended that charges be dismissed against the psychiatrist.

But Fleming said the board, on reviewing the hearing officer’s report filed in November, came to a different conclusion based on the same evidence, as it is within its rights to do. The censure is the fourth most severe action the board can take, after license revocation, license suspension and reprimand. It will be reported to national data banks, to which only employers and state medical boards have access.

Goldberg, 54, said yesterday he may appeal the decision to the Supreme Judicial Court, especially since the board’s own hearing officer recommended dismissing all charges.

“To have this pending for so many years, and then for the board to go against the recommendations of its own hearing officer – I can’t understand that,” he said.

He acknowledges he should have immediately told Patient A that it was inappropriate for her to kiss or touch him, but chalks that up to his inexperience at the time. “I certainly think I was guilty of poor judgment. I don’t think there was anything that comes close to . . . malpractice.”

Goldberg said he never had a sexual relationship with Patient A, whom he diagnosed as having schizo-affective schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder, or with any other patient or former patient. He said he believed the 1983 jury award to Patient A was not based on her allegations of sexual misconduct, but on her allegations that he did not properly handle the ending of the doctor-patient relationship.

But what disturbs him most about the case is that the board took so long to conclude it.