Long-serving doctor Ian Payne disqualified after using drugs in patient’s name

A grieving Hobart GP has been disqualified after fraudulently prescribing Viagra and sedatives in a patient’s name, but taking the drugs himself.

Viagra tablets.

A Hobart doctor has been disqualified from practice after fraudulently prescribing drugs in the name of a patient, but ultimately taking them himself.

Ian Payne, a registered GP since 1966, says his conduct took place “in the context of an extended grief reaction” to his long-term partner’s death in 2019.

The medications he picked up at Hobart pharmacies, over a period from March 2019 to December 2021, included 11 boxes of Viagra, four boxes of Cialis and eight of Tadalafil, also for erectile dysfunction, the sedative Diazepam and the hypertension drug Propranolol.

According to a newly-published Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal decision, the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency received a notification in March 2022 after Dr Payne retired and the patient went to a new doctor at the same clinic.

After an investigation by the Medical Board of Australia, it was alleged he engaged in professional misconduct by fraudulently writing prescriptions for a patient, without the patient’s knowledge or consent, to obtain medication for his own use.

The board also alleged he misled the operations manager of the clinic he worked in, by telling her he was using the prescriptions to collect medications for the patient – implying he had done so with their knowledge and consent.

Before the tribunal, Dr Payne admitted to both of the allegations.

His actions were discovered after his retirement, when the patient returned to the clinic under another doctor, who discussed the medications in question.

The clinic’s director then requested the pharmacy to ask Dr Payne to identify himself the next time he attended to obtain medications using the prescriptions – but Dr Payne refused to identify himself and left without the drugs.

When clinic staff approached Dr Payne, he made a number of false claims, including that he was helping a “very unwell patient”.

He later admitted to the conduct, agreed it constituted professional misconduct, and explained his actions came out of an extended period of grief.

Dr Payne retired in December 2021, and has not held any medical registration since September 2022.

Tribunal senior member Lucinda Jack ordered that Dr Payne be reprimanded, and disqualified him from applying for registration as a registered health practitioner for a period of two years.

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