‘Professionally and morally disgraceful’: Hospital consultant struck off for fraud

WORKPLACE: Castle Hill Hospital in Cottingham, where Dr Uzair Irshad was based when his misconduct was investigated

By Simon Bristow, Co-Editor

A skin cancer surgeon has been struck off after altering timesheets to claim payments for hours he didn’t work, including when he was on holiday.

Locum dermatology consultant Dr Uzair Irshad also forged the signatures of two colleagues on some of the paperwork to claim extra cash.

Irshad, 38, fiddled his timesheets for nearly two years while working at two NHS trusts in Doncaster and Barnsley between February 2019 and December 2020.

A Medical Practitioners’ Tribunal heard the fraud involved a “significant and substantial sum”, although the overall amount has not been made public.

Timesheet records showing the altered hours released by the tribunal suggest the sum was at least £48,000 based on an hourly rate charged by a regional NHS staff bank he was working for at the time.

His dishonesty only came to light when a colleague became suspicious.

Those concerns triggered an investigation by the NHS Counter Fraud Authority which referred to the case to the General Medical Council for a misconduct hearing.

By this time, Irshard was working as a consultant for the Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, based in the dermatology department at Castle Hill Hospital in Cottingham.

Originally from Pakistan, he first obtained a GMC registration in 2014.

At the start of the tribunal held earlier this month he admitted 25 counts of dishonesty.

At the hearing, the GMC’s counsel Alan Taylor said: “The dishonesty in this case was premeditated and repeated over a significant period of time, constituting a pattern of fraudulent claims.

“It was also persistent dishonesty and was covered up by forging the signatures of others.

“Reasonable and properly informed members of the public would be shocked and disgusted by Dr Irshad's actions in submitting fraudulent timesheets and defrauding the NHS over such an extended period.

“He breached the trust placed in him by colleagues by amending the timesheets after they had been signed by those colleagues, and also forging the signatures of colleagues who knew nothing about timesheets they had purportedly authorised.

“His actions represent very serious departures from the standards of conduct and behaviour expected of registered medical practitioners.”

Mr Taylor said Irshad had failed to give a satisfactory reason for his conduct, adding: “It strains credulity that the motive was not financial, given that the timesheets claimed additional hours.”

In his evidence, Irshad claimed he had “lost control” of himself during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic and was also undergoing a series of personal family issues at the time he was making the fraudulent claims.

Confirming the three-man tribunal’s decision to immediately strike him off the medical register, chairman Paul Moulder said: “The tribunal was of the view that Dr Irshad had not shown an understanding of what went wrong, what were the causes of him embarking on a dishonest course of conduct, and he had not considered the impact of his behaviour on his colleagues or on the profession.

“The tribunal was troubled by Dr Irshad’s evidence, as he seemed unable to provide a reason for his actions, other than to deny any suggestion of a financial motivation.

“The tribunal concluded that the dishonesty in this case was very serious and at the higher end of the spectrum of dishonesty.

“It concluded that this was so because of the long period over which the dishonest conduct had been carried out.

“The dishonest acts had occurred by fraudulent completion of timesheets on a very significant number of occasions. The misconduct had been perpetrated against two trusts and had involved others as apparent authorisation signatories.

“Dr Irshad had forged the signatures of two of his colleagues on multiple occasions. The misconduct had only ceased when suspicions had been raised and an investigation commenced.

“It also involved a significant degree of abuse of trust and defrauding the NHS of an unspecified but substantial amount of money.”

Mr Moulder said the repeated forgery of colleagues’ signatures was particularly concerning as it had put them at risk of disciplinary action.

He added: “The tribunal was satisfied Dr Irshad’s behaviour was conduct that was unacceptable and such that fellow practitioners would find deplorable. It concluded that his dishonest conduct was both professionally and morally disgraceful.”

Evidence given during the hearing by an unnamed NHS manager in Hull indicated up to 500 patient appointments would have to be cancelled if the tribunal opted for the lesser sanction of a short suspension.

But Mr Moulder said the tribunal had a duty to protect the public interest and uphold professional standards.

He said his misconduct was “fundamentally incompatible” with continued registration as a medical practitioner.