The former chief executive of a private healthcare company in Britain was found not guilty of serious professional misconduct by the General Medical Council last week after a High Court judicial review struck out many of the charges against him.
Chai Patel faced misconduct charges over alleged mistreatment of elderly residents at Lynde House in Twickenham, Middlesex, owned by Westminster Healthcare, the company of which he was chief executive from 1999 to 2002.
His case, taken to the GMC by a group of residents’ relatives, was seen as a test case to decide the responsibility that doctors who run a business such as a chain of care homes have towards those who are not their direct patients.
Dr Patel’s counsel, Mary O’Rourke, argued that he no longer practised as a doctor and had no responsibility for the health care of residents, either as doctor or chief executive.
But the GMC decided it had jurisdiction to hear the case, although it ruled that the reports of two critical inquiries into Lynde House were inadmissible as evidence. The first report, in 2001, found that the home was understaffed and under-resourced. A second investigation in 2002, commissioned by Kingston and Richmond Health Authority, found high numbers of falls among residents and unexplained bruising.
Dr Patel went to the High Court to seek a judicial review, challenging preliminary decisions made by the GMC fitness to practice panel before the hearing began.
He challenged rulings by the panel allowing the complainants’ lawyers to amend the original charges and refusing to strike out parts of the charges to which his lawyers objected. The High Court judge Mr Justice Collins stayed the case last February, pending the judicial review hearing. He called the original charges laid against Dr Patel a "rotten indictment."
On 15 June, with the consent of the group of residents’ families, the High Court ordered that some of the charges should be struck out and that amendments intended to rectify deficiencies in other charges should be disallowed.
Last week Elizabeth-Ann Gumbel QC, for the Lynde House relatives’ group, told the GMC that after taking legal advice the group was "reluctantly" calling no evidence on the outstanding charges.
"They regret the evidence has neither been heard nor tested and they will not have a full investigation into their complaints," she said.
The GMC’s fitness to practice panel recorded a formal finding of not guilty against Dr Patel, 50, a millionaire and prominent donor to the Labour party who now heads the Priory Group, a chain of drug and alcohol rehabilitation clinics.
Auriol Walters, of the relatives’ group, said: "We feel that if our evidence had come out the panel could have decided one way or the other, but at least we’d have had an opportunity for our evidence to be heard. I feel we have a just cause, and it hasn’t been heard or tried in a public arena as it should be."
After the conclusion of the hearing, Dr Patel said: "I am relieved that at last this terrible ordeal is over. My family and I have been through a great deal as a result of charges of serious professional misconduct which were never supported by any admissable evidence. I call today for the GMC to look at how it carries out its work."
