Former Southland urologist Dr Sajan Bhatia has had his registration cancelled and been censured by the New Zealand Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal.
The tribunal, chaired by Kathryn Davenport, said it had to express its strong disapproval of Dr Bhatia's conduct, which it described as a serious breach of professional standards.
The penalty order from the tribunal follows its guilty findings on three charges related to his practice following a hearing last September.
The tribunal found he had failed to provide appropriate care to a cancer patient, had continued to practise medicine without a current annual practising certificate and failed to comply with conditions previously imposed on his practice in 2007.
It found that his treatment of the patient, while not fully established, was serious enough to warrant disciplinary sanction.
A woman he had been treating for bladder cancer since 2000 told the tribunal Dr Bhatia had suggested she could take paracetamol for a strained muscle when she went to see him complaining of frequent and painful "claret coloured" urination.
She was later found to have a kidney tumour.
The tribunal found Dr Bhatia's failure to urgently organise a scan of her upper urinary tract combined with failing to provide her with BCG therapy (a treatment for bladder cancer) was sufficient to incur disciplinary sanction.
The tribunal said Dr Bhatia had taken no steps to rehabilitate himself or to address earlier concerns of the tribunal which had led to conditions being imposed on his practice.
He knew he had no annual practising certificate but continued to practise and operate.
The tribunal recommended to the Medical Council that if Dr Bhatia applied to go back on to the register, before he was returned he attend to all the matters the council considered outstanding or of concern dating back to February 2007.
Dr Bhatia was also ordered to pay 25% of the costs of and incidental to the hearing, prosecution and tribunal costs.
It is understood Dr Bhatia, who had been a urologist for more than 20 years in Invercargill, is living in South Australia.
He had been a member of the Southern District Health Board and its predecessor, the Southland board.
He was fined $8500 in October last year in the Invercargill District Court on a charge of practising without a certificate.
