Kentucky suspends license of doctor after ‘repeated falsification of information’
A former surgical resident at the University of Kentucky allegedly falsified a request for family leave and submitted fake recommendation letters in applications to other medical programs, according to the Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure.
The board issued an emergency suspension of the license of Dr. Paul A. Salazar. The order, released Wednesday, took effect Sept. 6.
UK had already terminated Salazar from his residency in July over issues with his professionalism that involved “multiple and repeated falsification of information,” the board said in its order.
Salazar completed medical school at the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis in 2018, then did a year of preliminary surgery training at universities in Colorado and Florida before beginning the general surgery residency program at UK in July 2020, in which he would train as a surgeon.
D. Sandra Beck, director of the program, told a board investigator that last spring, she notified Salazar he wasn’t progressing as professors thought he should and would have to repeat his fourth year of residency.
Salazar said he was thinking of quitting and that his wife was due to give birth soon. He was given time off through the federal Family and Medical Leave Act, and later sent Beck photos of twins he said were his sons.
However, Beck said the babies didn’t appear to be newborns, and when she checked, two doctors listed on leave forms said they hadn’t seen Salazar’s wife, according to the board.
Salazar also told Beck he was applying for a program in cardiothoracic surgery.
Beck advised him to withdraw from that program because he hadn’t finished his general surgery residency, but learned later he had been matched with a cardiothoracic program, according to the board.
When Beck asked Salazar about it, he said another UK professor had written a recommendation letter for him, but that doctor told Beck that wasn’t true, according to the board order.
Beck said she also received notice that Salazar had submitted recommendation letters from her and two other doctors in applying for a residency program in emergency medicine at a college in Georgia.
Beck got a copy of the letter sent under her name and confirmed it was fraudulent. The other doctors also said they hadn’t written recommendations for Salazar, according to the board order.
The board order said Salazar told an investigator that the babies in the photo were his brother’s children; that he submitted a false leave form a friend had signed; and that he wrote the recommendation letters in the name of Beck and two other doctors because he knew his professors wouldn’t write them for him.
He also acknowledged a claim he made in one letter about publishing COVID-19 research wasn’t true, according to the order.
The licensure board said there was probable cause to believe Salazar violated provisions barring doctors from engaging in “dishonorable, unethical, or unprofessional conduct of a character likely to deceive, defraud, or harm the public or any member thereof,” and knowingly making a false statement in any document executed in connection with the practice of medicine.
Salazar can request a hearing on the suspension. The board lists an address for him in Indiana. He could not be reached for comment.
This story was originally published September 8, 2022 at 10:21 AM.
