Bryce

A physician whose license to practice medicine was suspended by the Board of Medical Quality Assurance appeals from the judgment denying his petition for writ of mandate.

I

William C. Bryce, M.D., was part owner of and supervising physician for the Arrowhead Medical Clinic between April 1979 and June 1982. He had been licensed in California as an osteopath in 1955 and as a physician and surgeon in 1962. In 1979 he was certificated to supervise physician assistants.

In an accusation filed in November 1982, the Board of Medical Quality Assurance charged Bryce with aiding and abetting the clinic’s co-owners and several physician assistants with the unlicensed practice of medicine. Specifically, the charges included authorizing the clinic’s co-owner, who was not a medical practitioner of any sort, to give an allergy injection and permitting physician assistants to prescribe drugs on presigned, blank prescription forms. A hearing was eventually conducted before an administrative law judge who recommended the revocation of his license, stayed on condition he be suspended from the practice of medicine for 90 days and placed on probation for five years, and comply with various…

I respectfully dissent. Bryce argues there must be some reasonable relationship between the offense and the penalty. I agree.

The authorities upon which the majority relies mandate this conclusion. In Shea v. Board of Medical Examiners (1978) 81 Cal.App.3d 564 [ 146 Cal.Rptr. 653 ], the Court of Appeal reviewed the propriety of conditioning a physician’s recertification upon his submission to a psychiatric examination for determination of his capacity to resume practice. The doctor argued the order was in error because he was not charged in the accusation with being mentally ill. But the court upheld the order. “[T]he record amply supports the trial court’s findings that Dr. Shea on numerous occasions engaged in unprofessional conduct in that, upon believing a patient to be hypnotized he described to that patient, in the coarsest detail, both sexual foreplay and the mechanics of sexual congress without having been solicited to do so nor having first explained his plan; and further, that such course of treatment was not appropriate to any such patient’s medical complaint. Having read the testimony of Dr. Shea and of his patients, the board could reasonably question the doctor’s…

CROSBY, Acting P.J.

A physician whose license to practice medicine was suspended by the Board of Medical Quality Assurance appeals from the judgment denying his petition for writ of mandate.

William C. Bryce, M.D., was part owner of and supervising physician for the Arrowhead Medical Clinic between April 1979 and June 1982. He had been licensed in California as an osteopath in 1955 and as a physician and surgeon in 1962. In 1979 he was certificated to supervise physician assistants.

In an accusation filed in November 1982, the Board of Medical Quality Assurance charged Bryce with aiding and abetting the clinic's co-owners and several physician assistants with the unlicensed practice of medicine. Specifically, the charges included authorizing the clinic's co-owner, who was not a medical practitioner of any sort, to give an allergy injection and permitting physician assistants to prescribe drugs on presigned, blank prescription forms. A hearing was eventually conducted before an administrative law judge who recommended the revocation of his license, stayed on condition he be suspended from the practice of medicine for 90 days and placed on probation for five years, and…