GP facing inquiry into conviction

GP facing inquiry into conviction

25 January 2017

A DOWNPATRICK doctor who falsified clinical trials faces being struck off as a GP next month.

Dr Hugh McGoldrick will be brought before a disciplinary panel in England on February 8.

Three days have been set aside for the Medical Practitioners Tribunal impairment hearing, which will take place in Manchester.

Dr McGoldrick, of Crossgar Road East, was the first doctor in the UK to be convicted of deliberately falsifying data under the Medicines for Human Use (Clinical Trials) Regulations 2004.

The 59-year-old, who was a GP in Downpatrick for over 30 years before his retirement from his practice at the Downe Hospital last year, pleaded guilty at Belfast Crown Court to two counts of falsifying clinical trials relating to patients with sleeping disorders.

Initially jailed for nine months for the offence, after Judge Piers Grant emphasised Dr McGoldrick’s lack of remorse and said his only “sorrow concerns the fact that you were caught”.

His jail term was later suspended for two years by Lord Chief Justice Sir Declan Morgan because of the eight year delay in the case coming to court.

The Medical Practitioners Tribunal has now confirmed that it will determine his fitness to practise through an inquiry.

The formal allegation is that on April 22, Dr McGoldrick was convicted of two counts of conducting a clinical trial relating to the efficacy and safety of 2 mg per day of M100907 on sleep maintenance insomnia, otherwise than in accordance with the protocol relating to that trial, and in contravention of the Medicines for Human Use (Clinical Trials) Regulations 2004. 

It also confirmed it will also inquire into the allegation that on June 30, Dr McGoldrick was sentenced to nine months imprisonment suspended for two years and a £10,000 fine.