Dr. Anthony J. Carbone, an expatriate American doctor in Kyiv, says he suspects that management at a Kyiv clinic has tried to smear his reputation
Ukraine’s cash-strapped medical-care system has enthusiastically received equipment and specialists from the West since the county became independent, but some foreign doctors may not deserve the high reputation the enjoy here.
An American physician who ‘voluntarily’ stopped practicing medicine in the U.S., accusing his most recent employer in Ukraine, a Western-style up-market medical clinic, of trying to set him up.
Eurolab medical laboratory, a Kyiv healthcare facility that advertised its hiring of Carbone, a Harvard graduate, as its chief medical officer in February of this year, dismissed the 46-year-old physician late last month.
Carbone said that he was locked out of the clinic without being given an explanation or his last salary, adding that his personal property was seized by Eurolab employees.
The Post published an article on May 18 revealing Carbone’s dismissal from Eurolab and uncovered information that he had been investigated in 2000 by the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine for inappropriate sexual contact with a 16-year-old female patient. Eurolab officials, however, said they were unaware of the misconduct charges, which were dropped around five years ago. Carbone said he believes Eurolab got rid of him in connection with differing views of how to develop the clinic, adding that he suspects Eurolab officials of trying to use his past to smear his reputation in Ukraine.
The Past
According to the Massachusetts board, Carbone volunteered to stop practicing medicine in Massachusetts in 2000 until the issue had been resolved. The case never went to trial, and the charges were dropped the following year, after the death of the alleged victim.
“None of my medical licenses have ever been revoked, denied, suspended or limited in any manner,” Carbone said.
Before being hired by Eurolab earlier this year, Carbone had worked two years for American Medical Centers, a medical clinic in Kyiv.
At AMC and Eurolab, Carbone was the chief medical officer. He is registered in Ukraine as a “senior consultant” by the State Employment Center of the Labor Ministry of Ukraine.
“My contract and my work permit state that I am employed by Eurolab as a ‘Senior Consultant’, not a physician. In reality, the position that I held was Chief Medical Officer of Eurolab, a physican executive position,” he said.
Between the 2000-2001 investigation by the Massachusetts board and his arrival in Ukraine in 2004, Carbone did an M.A. in public health with a specialization in international health and health policy at Harvard. His medical degree is from Georgetown University in Washington D.C.
Carbone said the charges in Massachusetts steered him away from clinic work.
“After this traumatic incident, I really didn’t want to work clinical medicine again. I felt as though my life and career had been ruined by a single patient accusation.”
In the U.S., Carbone is currently an active member of the American College of Physician Executives. He has held licenses in half a dozen U.S. states, but all of these have since expired.
Carbone also served as an army officer, first as a biological and chemical warfare specialist and then as a flight surgeon.
Eurolab fallout
According to Carbone, relations with Eurolab General Director Andriy Palchevsky were amiable, but the relationship didn’t last long.
“They recruited me away from a big contract with AMC, pretended to be building a big medical center and then kicked me out the door,” Carbone said.
Carbone said the healthcare facility had been losing money since it opened in 2005.
“I was taking decisions and they were undermining them without my knowledge. I began to realize that they had no intention of creating a Western clinic,” the American doctor said.
Palchevsky declined to respond to inquiries by the Post, but in a phone interview on May 17, he said that Carbone had been dismissed because “he wasn’t a good specialist.”
The Post contacted employees who had worked at Eurolab and AMC with Carbone, but they declined to comment for the record.
“Andriy had been recruiting me for months and he offered me the opportunity to build a large five-star Western hospital,” said Carbone.
Carbone said that Eurolab, which advertised its expansion plans in February, now just wants him to go away.
“They hire someone with a lot of Western diplomas for window dressing to give the impression that this is a real Western clinic, but don’t give you the authority or resources to do real Western medicine,” the American doctor said.
Carbone also took issue with the way he was fired. According to him, his company car was towed away with his personal belongings in it, after which he was refused entry to the clinic by the guard.
“I tried calling Andriy for weeks,” said Carbone, adding that when he did get in touch with Palchevsky, the businessman “just called me a stupid and naive American.”
According to Carbone, Palchevsky and Eurolab’s chief financial officer Aleksey Kirilov are members of a Moscow-based company called UTS Group Moscow, which sells food additives. During the May 17 telephone interview with the Post, Palchevsky denied any connection to UTS or knowledge of Carbone’s investigation by the Massachusetts board.
AMC Managing Director Alex Sokol, who called Carbone’s performance “excellent,” during a May 17 interview with the Post, also denied knowledge of the Massachusetts charges.
“I was not aware of any disciplinary action,” he said. The Post was unable to re-contact Sokol by the time the paper went to press on May 24.
Back to the past
Carbone said he had never tried to hide any details of his professional past: “I was upfront about this (the charges) with both Alex Sokol and Andrey Palchevskiy right from the start.” In addition to the 2000 Massachusetts charges, Carbone was required by the Virginia Board of Medicine in 1999 to take a course “on professional boundaries” following allegations by a colleague that he had dated a patient. Thereafter, no further action was taken against Dr. Carbone.
“This course is a Risk Management Course that actually teaches physicians how to protect themselves against difficult patients and situations in order to prevent malpractice or patient accusations,” Carbone said.
Regarding the 16-year-old patient in Massachusetts, Carbone, who had been filling in for another doctor on leave at Cambridge Family Practice in Arlington, said she was a convicted prostitute and heroine addict.
According to Carbone, it wasn’t the girl, but rather her therapist, who accused him of sexual misconduct, reporting the girl’s statements to the police.
Carbone said the girl herself defended him during statements to the police.
“I have never done an internal exam in my life without a female nurse present,” he said, adding that the 16-year-old refused to testify against him in court. The case was dropped when the girl died. Carbone said she died of a heroine overdose.
Carbone said the incident led him to go into physician executive work. Later that same year, he turned down a job as the director of an ambulatory care center at one of Harvard Medical School’s teaching colleges.
“I was getting ready to start my dream job.” Instead, Carbone decided to do another post-graduate degree, before coming to Ukraine in 2004.
“The problem in Boston was that I had only been in Massachusetts for a couple of months. If I had had colleagues in the local medical community, this would have never become a medical board matter.”
Mia Alverado, a spokesperson for the Massachusetts Department of Social Services, said that the 16-year-old girl had been a “troubled child” but “a convincing witness.” Alverado said the department was prohibited by law from releasing any more details about the case.
Russel Aims, a spokesman for the Massachusetts board, and Kate Norton of the Middlesex County District Attorney’s office, also said that they couldn’t comment any further on the case.
“The only thing that I can speak to is Dr. Carbone’s tenure in Massachusetts, and that is no basis to believe or to conclude that Dr. Carbone’s competence to practice medicine or his reputation is in any way tainted,” said Paul Cirel, Carbone’s lawyer in the 2000 case.
According to Cirel, any further details about the case are irrelevant, because if the court had found the evidence substantial, it wouldn’t have dropped the charges.
More strange twists
Carbone said he suspects that his past might be being used against him by his former colleagues at Eurolab.
The American doctor said that Kirilov threatened to blackmail him by revealing his past to the Post and U.S. Embassy in order to ruin his reputation and, thus, prevent him from resurfacing at another Western-style clinic.
Carbone insists that Kirilov also threatened to find a way to ruin his relationship with Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko and his family.
During his May 17 interview with the Post, Eurolab’s Palchevsky said: “All I know about Carbone is that he was taking care of President Viktor Yushchenko’s family, because they were members of AMC.”
“Andriy Palchevsky asked me about the president and his family a thousand times, and I never said anything. He is obsessed with the Yushchenko’s and openly speaks negatively about the president. Ukraine is a democracy, so there is no problem with that. However, I find Palchevsky’s weaving of the president’s children into this story extremely disturbing,” said Carbone, who added that he could neither confirm nor deny whether he had treated the president’s family.Yushchenko’s spokesperson declined to reveal “personal” details of the president’s life.
