Board to revoke local doctor's license

Dr. John V. Dommisse, who has operated Nutritional, Metabolic & Psychiatric Medicine in Tucson for 14 years, is appealing the decision. The revocation is scheduled to take effect Sept. 13, though an appeal could delay or prevent that.

The board issued its order Friday.

Dommisse's medical practice focuses on treating medical ailments through nutritional blood-level adjustments, and he refers to himself as a nutritional physician.

In an interview Monday, Dommisse said he's being punished by a medical culture that over-prescribes rather than looking for alternatives. He said it's an outrageous action, given what he says is consistent success treating patients with chronic illness.

"I have not had a single heart attack or stroke in any patient in the 14 years I've been in Tucson," he said.

"I am challenging this whole process. I'm challenging the low standard of legal proof of the whole process, and I'm also suing all the lawyers I had in the past, and the physicians who have sham peer-reviewed me. This is an illegal witch hunt, and they are lying about several issues."

The board uses a "preponderance of evidence" test when determining whether to revoke a physician's license. Revocation is a serious move and a relatively rare one. Nearly 20,000 physicians hold licenses to practice in Arizona, and about five or six licenses are revoked annually, board media relations officer Roger Downey said.

Dommisse had previously been censured by the board, and his license was placed on probation for five years. He was cited for what the state said were inaccurate patient charts, for falsely claiming in his brochure to be able to prevent Alzheimer's disease and claiming a 100 percent success rate in treating depression and panic disorder and other ailments.

While Dommisse was on probation, the board says it received a complaint that the doctor had improperly prescribed thyroid medication and had refused to forward a patient's medical records to another treating physician. Dommisse on Monday said that patient had asked him not to forward the records.

A subsequent state review of Dommisse's patient records revealed "multiple concerns," including improper interpretation of laboratory tests, inappropriately diagnosed thyroiditis and diagnoses, and treatment of medical conditions without ever performing a physical examination.

The report says that by not conducting physical examinations, Dommisse placed patients at increased risk for misdiagnosis and treatment.

Dommisse is also licensed to practice medicine in South Africa, Ontario, Virginia and Connecticut. The Arizona action will go into a National Practitioner Databank, which will allow the medical boards in those other jurisdictions to see the Arizona action, Downey said.

The board report says Dommisse has acknowledged that he does not perform or document complete physical examinations of his patients. He practices what's called "telemedicine," often consulting with patients on the telephone. The blood tests he orders are what he uses for diagnosis.

Since 2003 he has required patients to sign a "type of practice disclaimer," in which they acknowledge his explanation that he was trained in psychiatry and not in endocrinology. They must also acknowledge that he won't do physical exams or act as a primary care physician, he said.

Dommisse offered 21 letters from physicians in support of him, as well as letters from 119 patients. However, the administrative law judge who heard the case would not allow those letters to be admitted into evidence. The board's attorneys objected to their admission based on hearsay and relevancy.

Dommisse earned his medical degree from the University of Cape Town in South Africa in 1965.

He categorizes his nutritional medicine as cutting edge, evidenced by the two quotations he selected for his Web site.

One is Robert Frost's: "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference."

The other is Muriel Strade's: "I will not follow where the path may lead, but I will go where there is no path, and I will leave a trail."