2023-10-27 05:40:27
The West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals has affirmed the orders made in two cases involving a McMechen doctor in Kanawha County Circuit Court.
The Supreme Court announced Thursday that it affirmed orders made in February 2018 and October 2021 in Kanawha Circuit Court cases involving Dr. Roland Chalifoux Jr., owner of Valley Pain Management in McMechen. Chalifoux had appealed those orders to the state Supreme Court.
Chalifoux had been indicted in federal court on charges of health care fraud, mail fraud and wire fraud in July 2017, and had his license suspended by the West Virginia Board of Osteopathic Medicine in July 2014. He had been accused of unsafe injection practices. His license was reinstated a month later and the Board of Osteopathic Medicine dismissed the case once morest him in November 2015. The federal charges once morest Chalifoux were dropped in 2018, and Chalifoux agreed to pay $28,000 in restitution and be on probation for one year.
Chalifoux had sued the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Services, the West Virginia Bureau of Public Health and former West Virginia State Health Officer Dr. Letitia Tierney. In that suit, he claimed a press release announcing that he and his clinic used unsafe injection practices and urging patients to seek testing for bloodborne illnesses breached their duty of confidentiality.
He sued the Board of Osteopathic Medicine and its then-executive director Diana Shepard for failing to provide him a hearing within 15 days of the board’s summary suspension of his medical license.
A Kanawha circuit judge found that the DHHR defendants were entitled to qualified immunity “because the issuance of a press release identifying Chalifoux and his clinic was a discretionary act permitted by applicable regulations and Chalifoux produced no evidence that they did so fraudulently or maliciously.”
A Kanawha circuit judge found that Chalifoux’s claim once morest the Board of Osteopathic Medicine defendants might have been brought in a previously filed action for injunctive relief “which action was settled and dismissed” and was therefore barred by res judicata, which is designed to prohibit parties from relitigating a claim or a defense of something that has already been decided.
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