Bogus Doctor’s Role in Fired Workers’ Drug Tests Probed

Southern California Gas Co. is investigating whether Gerald Barnes, the man arrested in Los Angeles by the FBI earlier this month on suspicion of masquerading as a physician, conducted drug test reviews on its employees, 15 of whom were fired for positive results, a spokeswoman said Thursday.

The utility contracted with Executive Health Group, the Los Angeles clinic where Barnes allegedly was employed as a physician for nearly a year, to review employee drug tests and conduct physical examinations, said Jeri Love, the Gas Co. spokeswoman.

The actual drug tests were conducted by a lab unaffiliated with Executive Health Group, but Barnes may have played a role in evaluating as many as 13 test results, Love said.

Six of the 19 drug tests of gas company employees taken while Barnes allegedly was employed were reviewed by other physicians at the Executive Health Group’s headquarters in New York, Love said.

If Barnes was the physician supervising the tests, they could be invalid, said Harry Strahl, director of safety and enforcement for the California Public Utilities Commission, which oversees implementation of federal drug testing regulations for gas company employees involved in “safety sensitive jobs” such as building pipelines and turning on gas service at homes.

In a transcript of an arbitration hearing for one fired employee, supplied by his labor representative, Barnes identified himself as the only physician at Executive Health who reviewed drug test results. Paul Frankel, president of Executive Health Group, confirmed that claim.

“We certainly would not have hired him had we had an inkling of a suspicion that he was not a doctor,” Frankel said, adding that the company checked Barnes’ medical license number and medical references before hiring him.

“A medical license is something that my children can reproduce on a home Macintosh if they really put their mind to it,” he said. “If the states took as much care in issuing medical licenses as they do in [issuing] driver’s licenses, I think we could all have more faith in the doctors that carry those licenses.”

Under regulations issued by the U.S. Department of Transportation, a drug test must be reviewed by a “medical review officer,” a licensed physician who determines whether prescribed medication might have caused a false positive result.

Gas company employees, some of whom are represented by the Utility Workers Union of America, were outraged at the possibility that their members may have been fired unjustly.

“The purpose of the [medical review officer] was so that . . . a medical doctor could look at the tests and see if there was a reason for the positive [results],” said Beatty Henson, the union’s business manager, who supplied the arbitration hearing transcript. “We are now looking into the legalities of whether or not we can have these tests thrown out.”

Barnes, 62, was arrested April 15 and charged with fraud for allegedly practicing medicine without a license at the Executive Health group from July 1995 to April 1996. He is being held without bail in a federal detention facility in Los Angeles. Barnes was sent to state prison in 1981, 1984, 1989 and 1991 for convictions related to impersonating a physician in health clinics in Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino counties.

Barnes served his first sentence for involuntary manslaughter in the death of a diabetic patient whose condition he misdiagnosed at an Irvine clinic.

Three days after Barnes’ April arrest, Executive Health officials informed the gas company of Barnes’ possible role in reviewing drug tests, Love said. The company sent a memo to more than 5,000 employees and launched its own investigation, she said.

Love said she cannot predict when the review will be completed because all of Executive Health’s files related to Barnes’ service have been confiscated by the FBI, which is conducting its own probe.