Physicians

The state Board of Physicians Tuesday suspended the license of a Salisbury pain doctor, who the board said had not been using proper safeguards in prescribing opiates. Separately, state health officials had suspended Dr. Brent R. Fox's authority to write prescriptions for opiates and other controlled dangerous substances last week after their own investigation showed he was prescribing drugs in amounts outside of standards and was not conducting thorough exams of patients. The new action means the doctor can't practice medicine in Maryland for now. The doctor had been referred to the state by a managed-care organization with which Fox was affiliated, and the state has become more aggressive in tackling abuse of highly addictive painkillers.

As a former patient of Dr. Fray Marshall ("Urologist and former Hopkins professor recalled as a 'superhero' in his field," Dec. 9), I wish to add my voice in expressing my regrets about his untimely death. Dr. Marshall was a caring physician who listened to his patient and treated them with utmost respect and personal attention. The world of medicine, and field of urology, specifically, has lost a great physician. Siegfried Buchwalter, Baltimore

Dr. Sherman Samuel Robinson, a retired pediatrician who had been the athletics physician for Severna Park High School, died of cancer Monday at his Edgewater home. He was 79. Born in Pittsfield, Mass., and raised on Staten Island, N.Y., he earned a degree in biology and chemistry from Davis & Elkins College in Elkins, W.Va. He also belonged to the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity. He was a 1957 graduate of the Georgetown University School of Medicine. While at Georgetown he met his future wife, Joan McCarron.

St. Agnes Hospital announced the induction of nine doctors to the Healing Hands Society. The physicians were honored for clinical excellence and leadership plus service to the community and their hand imprints were added to a recently unveiled wall. Those recognized were Dr. Karen Broderick, Dr. James Castellano, Dr. Michael Ellis, Dr. Keith Falcao, Dr. Deepak Merchant, Dr. Arturo Santos, Dr. William Signor III, Dr. Willard Standiford and Dr. Michael Zatina.

The chairman of the state Board of Physicians, which was slammed in a recent legislative audit for its dysfunction, told a panel of lawmakers Wednesday that it could get on track in another year by hiring an outside consultant and instituting long-awaited fixes. Several lawmakers said they've waited years for the board charged with protecting the public from bad doctors to clear a backlog of cases, institute sanctioning guidelines for doctors and develop transparent and consistent practices.

Dr. Carol Cooper has taken an alternative path to healing the sick and the weary. A graduate of University of Maryland School of Medicine, Dr. Copper has been practicing family medicine for over 20 years. But sensing a frustration in her patients and a need to explore her interest in alternative medicine, Havre de Grace resident Dr. Cooper recently completed an additional 300 hours of training in acupuncture in order to narrow her field of practice to medical acupuncture. “About 15 years ago, I had a back problem and I went to a doctor who practiced acupuncture.

Dr. Harry L. Knipp, whose family had been associated with family medicine in West Baltimore and Catonsville for 110 years and who treated generations of families, died Friday of an intestinal disease at his home in Hedgesville, W.Va. The former longtime Ten Hills resident was 87. Dr. Knipp was born at his grandfather's house, at Fremont Avenue and Lanvale Street, where his father George A. Knipp and grandfather Harry E. Knipp practiced medicine together. The Knipps have been practicing medicine — 11 family members have been physicians —since pre-Revolutionary War days.

The state Board of Physicians has a serious backlog of complaints and a growing timeline for resolving it, according to a newly released legislative audit of the agency charged with protecting the public from bad doctors. It also isn't keeping complete records and its actions lack transparency, sometimes in violation of open meetings laws, the review says. The review comes ahead of the General Assembly session in January, when lawmakers are to consider reauthorizing the medical board, which expires under a "sunset" provision.

When I met a woman I'll call "Mary" in Luwingu, a remote district in northern Zambia, she had already seen three of her children die. She did not know that she had contracted HIV until she arrived at the clinic where for the past few months I had been supervising care for pregnant women living with HIV. Like many women, when she learned that she was HIV-positive, she required counseling to be able to grasp her situation - that she would need...