Georgia suspends medical license of jailed surgeon 'Dr. Hazmat'

Dr. Najam Azmat, the state-hopping vascular surgeon and pain doctor who was jailed without bail in Georgia earlier this year, has had his license to practice medicine suspended in the state.

Modern Healthcare featured his story in a March 16 article detailing how the doctor—nicknamed “Dr. Hazmat” in his federal indictment—was allowed to work as a physician in clinics that dispensed large amounts of addictive pain drugs to out-of-state clients after his earlier career as a hospital surgeon foundered.

On March 21, the Georgia Composite Medical Board suspended Azmat's license to practice medicine in the state. The order cites a Feb. 16, 2012 decision by the Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure to suspend Azmat in that state after a consultant concluded his pain-clinic work made him “an imminent danger” to Kentuckians. Azmat's medical license was also suspended in Indiana in March 2012.

A magistrate judge in Savannah, Ga., on March 19 ordered Azmat held without bond until the completion of his criminal trial. He faces 51 counts of distribution of controlled substances, maintaining a drug-involved premises, and conspiracy to launder money, punishable by more than 10 years in prison.

The judge ruled that Azmat recently reported earning $30,000 a month, and that he has family ties in two different countries, which made him a substantial flight risk (PDF).

Azmat was reported to the National Practitioner Data Bank for having a high rate of complications while working at an Ohio hospital in 1997. A decade later, a hospital in Satilla, Ga., was sued by a nurse whistle-blower who alleged Azmat was unqualified for endovascular procedures he was performing, and that one his patients subsequently died.

Authorities alleged that hospital officials in Satilla conspired with Azmat to avoid reporting the restrictions to his surgical privileges to the National Practitioner Data Bank, which is used by regulators to monitor potentially problematic practitioners. The hospital—then known as Satilla Health Services—paid $840,000 to settle the case without admitting any wrongdoing.

After leaving Satilla, court records say Azmat then set up a pain clinic in Garden City, Ga., called East Health Center, which was known to be prescribing large amounts of addictive narcotics to “patients” from out of state. When that business was closed down, Azmat moved to Lexington, Ky., to establish a similar business there. That business, the Lexington Algiatry, was also shut down and led to the emergency suspension of Azmat's license in that state.