Angry coroner’s threat to jail GP
Reporter: Richard Hooton
Date published: 26 May 2010
Doctor attacked for stalling inquest into woman’s death
A LEADING doctor was warned by a coroner that he had come close to being jailed for not co-operating with an inquest.
Coroner Simon Nelson blasted Dr Zuber Ahmed, from Glodwick Primary Care Centre, for not having compiled a report into a patient’s medical history despite being written to and contacted five times over seven months.
Mr Nelson said the lack of co-operation had delayed an inquest into the death of the patient, Susan Mealing, (59) and it was the first time in 10 years such an occurrence had happened.
When the inquest finally took place at Oldham Magistrates Court yesterday, Mr Nelson told him: “If you had not co-operated this afternoon you would have been facing a term of imprisonment.”
Dr Ahmed, a clinical executive on NHS Oldham’s board of directors, apologised to the coroner and the family but gave no explanation.
But he said he had attended the inquest to help and gave a verbal report on his records of the patient.
He also faced questions from Mrs Mealing’s devastated family who were concerned about the huge amount of medication she was prescribed before she was found collapsed from an accidental overdose at her High Crompton home on July 8 last year.
Dr Ahmed said he had been treating Mrs Mealing for around 25 years.
Mr Nelson told the doctor: “The reality is that the information and evidence you gave this afternoon could have easily been put into a report that would have enabled me to conduct an inquiry at a much earlier stage and avoid the hassle of repeatedly trying to contact you at the surgery.”
He is the former chairman of both the primary care trust’s professional executive committee and the black and minority ethnic network and is vice chairman of Oldham Partnership.
Inquest — see next item
