The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Jonathon Naylor Editor A Flin Flon physician is suing the hospital's former chief of staff for making unproven allegations of financial wrongdoing. Dr. Krishan Sethi's statement of claim against Dr. Stanley Miller, filed Oct. 9, seeks damages in an amount to be determined at trial. The basis of the lawsuit is a letter Miller wrote to the Manitoba Ombudsman in October 2010 when he was still with the Flin Flon General Hospital. 'The words contained in the Miller Letter referred to the plaintiff as a physician who acted in a morally indefensible and perhaps illegal fashion and who paid Government money into a nebulous slush fund,' read the statement of claim, filed by Sethi's lawyer, Bill Haight. 'The words referred to in the Miller Letter are false and lower the plaintiff's reputation in the eyes of reasonable people. They are therefore defamatory. Further, the words in the Miller Letter were designed to impugn the plaintiff's reputation.' The claim says Miller's statements have damaged Sethi's reputation, caused him 'embarrassment and humiliation' and cost him past and future income. In his letter, Miller asked the Ombudsman to 'investigate suspected irregularities' in how government funds were allocated to doctors working in the Flin Flon ER for about three years ending in June 2010. It was during those three years that local doctors were tasked with managing a provincial fund designed to staff the ER and ensure its continued operation. See 'Claims...' on pg.13 Continued on pg.7 Miller alleged doctors in charge of placing physicians on the ER schedule _ including Sethi _ acted in a 'morally indefensible and perhaps illegal' manner. Those same doctors, Miller claimed, put money from the provincial fund into a 'nebulous slush fund.' Miller further alleges that Sethi mounted a challenge to regain control of physician scheduling after hospital administration took over those duties. The statement of claim does not mention Miller's allegation that Sethi was one of two ER doctors to be paid 'very large sums' out of the provincial fund while 'some others were paid even less than the fees provided by Manitoba Health.' Miller made that claim in a letter to the Manitoba College of Physicians and Surgeons, the regulatory body for the province's doctors, according to the Winnipeg Free Press. It is not clear whether this was the same letter he wrote to the Ombudsman. At the end of the day, a panel of Sethi's medical peers, which met to consider a number of complaints against the physician, found no financial impropriety on his part. Sethi and the Northern RHA have been at odds for more than two years, ever since Sethi's hospital privileges were revoked _ and then restored via court order _ in late 2010. William Pope, CEO of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, was unable to speak to the Sethi matter. 'The Medical Act prevents me from commenting on a physician unless there is formal, public discipline, which is not the situation with Dr. Sethi,' said Pope. Miller, who lives in The Pas and is well into his 80s, could not be reached for comment. Sethi's statement of claim was filed at the Court of Queen's Bench in Winnipeg.
