Liam McNally
A long-serving former Melton GP has been banned from applying for registration as health practitioner for four years after being caught prescribing opiates and benzodiazepines without “clinical justification”.
Dr Beng Ong, who in recent years had allowed his registation as doctor to lapse, had worked as a GP at the Melton Medical Clinic for 44 years.
In April 2019 the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) launched an investigation into Dr Ong following a notification from the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services.
A VCAT hearing in late March heard allegations of misconduct on Dr Ong’s behalf, involving six patients between 2015 and 2019.
The misconduct was summarised as prescribing Schedule Four and/or Schedule Eight drugs including Oxycodone, Stilnox, and Diazepam when there was no clinical rationale for prescribing them, prescribing Schedule Eight drugs without the necessary permit and, on those occasions when he did have a permit, prescribing in amounts exceeding what the permit allowed.
Dr Ong was also found to have failed to notify the secretary to the Department of Health and Human Services that his patients were drug-dependent persons and that he inadequately managed the clinical care of his patients by prescribing opiates and-or benzodiazepines in the long-term without appropriately assessing the patients’ pain or documenting a pain management plan, prescribed high dose opiates and-or benzodiazepines without considering the risk to those patients of ongoing use and escalating doses and failed to identify and manage the patients’ drug dependency.
The tribunal also heard Dr Ong prescribed Schedule Four Drugs when he had reason to believe that the patient was a drug-dependent person who was exhibiting drug seeking behaviour, prescribed other drugs to his patients concurrently, such as anti-depressants, without undertaking mental health assessments or risk assessments for suicide or self-harm and failed to ensure continuity of care by failing to keep adequate clinical notes.
An AHPRA board submission to the hearing said when the conduct is viewed as a whole, “the Board considers it to demonstrate serious, systemic failures that fall substantially below the standard reasonably expected of a doctor of Dr Ong’s training and experience and is inconsistent with Dr Ong being a fit and proper person to hold registration in the profession”.
Dr Ong admitted the conduct alleged and the characterisation of the conduct as constituting professional misconduct.
He was banned from applying for registration as a medical practitioner for four years.
