Shannen Headley
BBC News, West Midlands
Dr. Marc Whitehouse has been suspended for four months after a medical tribunal found his fitness to practice impaired due to writing false prescriptions. The 31-year-old doctor from Herefordshire admitted to impersonating a chief medical examiner on five occasions between March 2016 and December 2018.
During a hearing at the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS), it was established that he issued prescriptions for patients he falsely claimed were in the custody of West Mercia Police while pretending to be affiliated with the force.
Dr. Whitehouse, who received his medical qualifications from the University of Birmingham, has been employed by Wye Valley NHS Trust since 2016. He also worked as a self-employed forensic medical examiner from 2011 to 2016, but the tribunal confirmed that the false prescriptions were written outside of this period.
On June 6, 2016, and October 5, 2019, Dr. Whitehouse wrote prescriptions for two individuals he claimed were in police custody, despite them not being so. Although he had worked as a contractor for West Mercia Police between September 2013 and October 2015, he was not employed by them during the incidents in question.
Additionally, he admitted to writing prescriptions on December 29, 2018, and October 5, 2019, on letterhead from “Whitehouse Medical Services Ltd,” a company that had been dissolved by the time the prescriptions were issued.
West Mercia Police initiated a fraud investigation into the matter and referred Dr. Whitehouse to the General Medical Council in October 2019, which subsequently brought the case to the MPTS.
The tribunal determined that suspending his medical license was necessary to balance his interest in continuing to practice medicine with the need to send a clear message about the unacceptability of his actions within the medical profession.
