SoMdNews
Woman continues quest for closure against Waldorf psychiatrist
State board found doctor violated care standards in treating suicide victim
by Jeff Newman
June 25, 2014
Psychiatrist Rehana Hussain
In its Dec. 30 order, the board found that Dr. Rehana Hussain failed to meet the appropriate standards for care and maintain adequate medical records during her five years treating Christine “Chrissy” Davis, who was 34 when she fatally shot herself in the head with a .38-caliber handgun the night of Dec. 22, 2005.
The board immediately stayed a suspension of Hussain’s medical license and placed her on a minimum of three years probation, both on the condition that she complete within nine months board-approved courses in psychopharmacology, treating potentially suicidal patients and medical record keeping. The board will perform a chart review of Hussain’s practice one year after she completes the courses.
“The issue in this case is not whether Dr. Hussain’s psychotherapeutic management and prescribing were factors in or caused the patient’s suicide, but whether her overall treatment of the patient from January 2001 to December 2005 met the standard quality of care,” wrote Christine A. Farrelly, the board’s acting executive director.
Hussain did not return messages when asked for comment.
While the board did not go so far as to deem Hussain responsible for Davis’ death, for Waldorf resident Rose Blaso, the decision serves as affirmation of her long-held suspicions that her daughter was driven to suicide by a destructive cocktail of medications prescribed by Hussain, who treated Davis during the last five years of her life.
Blaso provided to the Maryland Independent a copy of the board’s final order.
Though she found “some relief” in the board’s ruling, Blaso said she nonetheless deemed its sanctions inadequate punishment and is currently conferring with Prince George’s County prosecutors in an attempt to file criminal charges in order “to feel that justice will be served.”
Davis committed suicide at the home of a family friend in Prince George’s County.
Blaso said she has suffered severe health problems since her daughter’s death, including the onset of anxiety, depression and panic attacks, which have led to severe weight loss and multiple trips to the emergency room. She has considered but not decided whether to file civil charges in addition to pursuing criminal counts, she said.
Del. C.T. Wilson (D-Charles), a former prosecutor, said he could not recall a similar case resulting in criminal charges in his eight years with the Prince George’s County State’s Attorney’s Office.
“Civil cases, sure,” he said.
Davis first saw Hussain in January 2001 in the hospital, where she had been admitted following a violent outburst against her sister, Blaso said.
Hussain initially diagnosed Davis, who was in the midst of a personal crisis, with schizoaffective disorder and suicidal thoughts and prescribed an antipsychotic, mood stabilizer, antidepressant and Cogentin, a drug commonly used to treat Parkinson’s disease.
Hussain claimed in her response to the board’s investigation that she prescribed Cogentin to many patients as a prophylactic to counter the potential side effects of antipsychotics, but the board found the drug inappropriate for a patient like Davis.
Released from the hospital after five days, Davis continued seeing Hussain as an outpatient and during several intermittent hospitalizations until her death. During that time, Hussain diagnosed Davis with bipolar and schizoaffective disorders and prescribed a total of 10 medications meant to treat everything from schizophrenia and bipolar disorders to depression, anxiety, epilepsy, seizures, paranoia, delusions and hallucinations, according to the board’s charges.
Davis frequently complained of severe gastrointestinal and abdominal pain during her treatment, leading to several hospitalizations and also decreased her dosages or stopped taking altogether several of the medications due to side effects such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal pain.
The board found that, rather than insisting Davis stick to her medication regimen, Hussain would improperly alter the prescriptions based on Davis’ requests, leading to “increased withdrawal symptoms, clinical instability and the development of debilitating physical ailments.”
Blaso spent four years following Davis’ death researching her daughter’s medical history but said Hussain consistently rebuffed her requests for medical records.
Already suspicious, Blaso filed a complaint with the board in July 2008, claiming Hussain’s treatment contributed to her daughter’s suicidal descent.
The board forwarded the case to two certified psychiatrists in September 2008 and issued formal charges in May 2011.
Administrative Law Judge Stephen J. Nichols issued a proposed decision in October 2012, recommending that Hussain’s medical license be suspended to allow for re-education followed by three years of probation and peer review monitoring, according to the final order.
Hussain filed exceptions to the proposal, but the board dismissed her claims and sided with Nichols’ findings.
The board found Hussain’s “violations of the standard of quality medical care were numerous” and included failure to develop a treatment plan and use psychopharmacology to stabilize Davis, despite diagnosing her with multiple disorders; the improper prescribing Cogentin and failure to recognize it as the potential source of Davis’ gastrointestinal pain; passive medication management despite Davis’ noncompliance with her regimen; and failure to address Davis’ alcohol abuse and conduct suicide risk assessments.
“The Board’s determination on these issues would be the same no matter whether the patient committed suicide or not,” Farrelly wrote.
The board also found that Hussain’s documentation of Davis’ treatment “constituted not only a failure to keep adequate medical records, but we[re] so substandard that these inadequacies, in and of themselves, violated the standard of quality care.”
“All of the experts in this case had to spend many hours with Dr. Hussain in order to make sense of the medical record or understand the treatment she provided to [Davis],” Farrelly wrote.