Lack of State Medical License Prompts Arrest

The head of a nonprofit group that operates a home for the developmentally disabled has been arrested on suspicion of misrepresenting himself as a physician, a state investigator said Thursday.

George M. Fisher, 49, was arrested Monday afternoon at the corporate offices of Casa Grande Community Care Inc. in Huntington Beach, which operates a 91-person home in Anaheim, officials said.

Medical board investigators and Fisher’s attorney said he did not attempt to treat patients at Casa Grande or practice medicine in California. But investigators sought an arrest warrant after Fisher allegedly listed his title as doctor last year on an application to operate the facility, said Jim Kovash, a senior investigator with the state Medical Board.

In January, 1992, Fisher, on behalf of Casa Grande Community Care, applied to the state to operate the home on West Ball Road, one of only a handful statewide that provide resident care for the developmentally disabled, many of whom are elderly and severely handicapped, Kovash said.

The state Department of Health Services, as part of its review of Fisher’s application, checked with the Medical Board to verify his credentials, Kovash said. The Medical Board found that Fisher was not a licensed doctor in the state and sought an arrest warrant.

Fisher, who refused comment Thursday, graduated in 1987 from La Universidad Technologica de Santiago, a medical school in the Dominican Republic, said his attorney, Robert Chatterton.

The state does not require the operator of a facility like Casa Grande to be a doctor, Kovash said.

“I think he wanted to be sure (his application) got through,” Kovash said.

Fisher’s nonprofit group, which the California secretary of state lists in good financial standing, is working to improve conditions at the facility, Chatterton said.

In 1991, when the home was operated by other people, authorities threatened to cut Medi-Cal funding and close it after inspections found deficiencies, including lax record-keeping.