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A pair of colonoscopies that included a screaming patient and a surgical tech without a medical license handling scope insertion put a Tampa doctor on probation last week by the state’s Board of Medicine.
Dr. Ishwari Prasad also was fined $7,500, must pay $6,301 in Florida Department of Health case costs and has to take a five-hour continuing medical education course in laws, rules and ethics before Aug. 7, 2025. But the probation provides the meat of Prasad’s punishment.
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Prasad has never been disciplined by the Board of Medicine previously, but state records show some insurance payouts to patients of $250,000 in 2017 to the estate of a patient, who alleged a mistake caused a year-long delay in diagnosing colon cancer; $115,000 in 2008 to a patient who suffered “a spontaneous perforation of a diverticula in the third portion of the duodenum” and died after a long hospital stay; and $250,000 in 2004 to a patient who “sustained a colon perforation following the colonoscopy.”
Prasad’s current problems started on June 5, 2023, at the Ambulatory Surgery Center, 4500 E. Fletcher Ave. in the Tampa area.
According to the Florida Department of Health administrative complaint, Prasad uses hearing aids, but wasn’t wearing them during the two colonoscopies he was in charge of that day.
“During one or both procedures, the surgical team was unable to effectively communicate” with Prasad, the complaint said.
During the first colonoscopy, the complaint said, Prasad “improperly delegated” to a surgical tech, someone without a medical license, at least one of the following tasks: scope insertion, scope manipulation, manipulating the snare over polyps or tissue or removing polyps or tissue.
(During the second colonoscopy, the complaint said, Prasad “began inserting the scope before the patient was fully sedated. The patient began yelling.
Prasad “did not immediately stop the procedure when it became apparent that the patient was not fully sedated. [Prasad] failed to realize that the patient was not fully sedated due to [Prasad’s] failure to wear” his hearing aids.