State Medical Board Moves on 4 County Doctors : Watchdog panel: One gets probation for botched surgeries; another gets the same for Medi-Cal fraud; a third allegedly used an unlicensed device, and a fourth is accused of having sex with patients.

The Medical Board of California has placed Dr. Kesho Hurria on five years’ probation after concluding that the Anaheim surgeon botched three orthopedic operations.

The board also put a Santa Ana doctor on probation because of a felony conviction for Medi-Cal fraud. It sought to discipline a Newport Beach physician for treating patients with an unlicensed medical device. And last week, it accused an Anaheim weight-loss doctor of malpractice for having sex with two patients and overprescribing addictive drugs.

No doctors in these cases, filed since September, could be reached for comment Thursday.

Hurria reached a settlement with the medical board and made several admissions. Among them:

* He did not use enough pins or place them “in the proper position” during a February, 1986, surgery to immobilize a teen-ager’s broken arm.

* During a knee surgery in March, 1986, he could not locate a key nerve and “improperly” tried to trace it by making a series of incisions from the patient’s ankle to his knee.

Conditions of his probation include making regular reports to the state, completing a course in medical ethics and passing an orthopedics exam. He resumed surgery after passing the orthopedics test Sept. 3, a board official said.

Also placed on five years’ probation was Santa Ana physician Thoung Vo, who in November, 1984, was sentenced to a year in jail for taking $85,500 in fraudulent Medi-Cal payments.

The medical board also recommended that Newport Beach physician Robert C. Lynch lose his medical license or face other penalties for treating patients with an unlicensed medical device. In August, 1990, undercover officers arrested Lynch on misdemeanor charges after he used his hand-held device--a brass bar with a wet cloth wrapped around it--to “diagnose” a woman’s alleged metabolic problem.

The medical board last week sought to suspend the license of Anaheim weight-control specialist Dr. Michael D. Lawton after reporting that he had sex with two patients.

The board also claimed that Lawton was “grossly negligent” for failing to diagnose a patient’s severe hypertension, for giving an amphetamine-related drug to an amphetamine addict and for giving patients “multiple injections” of vitamins without cause.

In a special Dec. 19 hearing, a state administrative law judge in San Diego sharply restricted Lawton’s practice, barring him from seeing female patients alone, requiring him to be monitored by another doctor and ordering all controlled substances removed from his office.

On the eve of last week’s hearing, Lawton and his wife, Nancy, were arrested on felony charges of offering a bribe to a witness, according to investigator Kathy Schmidt.

Restrictions on Lawton’s license are in effect until Jan. 9, when another administrative hearing is scheduled to decide whether to lift the restrictions or suspend Lawton’s license.