A FAMILY doctor from Darwen who told "lie after lie" in a bid to cover up his incompetent treatment of an elderly patient has been suspended for four months.

Dr Ahmed Zaman also "inappropriately" arranged for 69-year-old Thomas McHugh - who later died - to be admitted, at a cost of £200 a week, to a residential home which he himself owned, when the desperately ill patient should have been immediately admitted to hospital.

The General Medical Council's professional conduct committee, in London, found Dr Zaman guilty of serious professional misconduct.

He was also found guilty of making false and misleading statements to an inquiry into Mr McHugh's case, inadequately treating the patient and arranging his admission to the home when it was not in his best interests. He has 28 days to appeal.

He was found not guilty of a similar charge involving Mr McHugh's wife Mary and of failing to arrange cover for the couple while he was on holiday. Committee chairman Professor Peter Richards said Dr Zaman had seriously failed his patient and said: "The public are entitled to expect that registered medical practitioners are honest and trustworthy.

"The committee is therefore gravely concerned that you gave false and misleading evidenceto the independent review panel and that you have continued to deny your clinical failings identified by this case."

Dr Zaman said: "Thank you Sir," after the chairman explaiend the decision. The committee said it would be inappropriate for the doctor to continue to be involved in either educating or judging other doctors.

He said the doctr had avoided a stiffer punishment because the case appeared to be an isolated case.

Helen Mountfield, for the General Medical Council, told its professional conduct committee that Dr Zaman, of the Health Centre, Union Street, Darwen, had acted for reasons of self-interest and not in his patients' best interest.

The hearing was told he failed to give due weight to Mr McHugh's history and symptoms when he went to the surgery on October 15,1996, complaining of passing large amounts of blood. Miss Mountfield said Dr Zaman had also failed to examine Mr McHugh at all during a home visit on November 25, 1996, even though his patient had said he was "at the end of his tether".

She asked the committee to accept that Dr Zaman's claim that Mr McHugh had only complained of isolated incidents of bowel problems during his 20 years as his patient was "simply not credible". She said it was one of a number of deliberate lies which the doctor had told, both to an independent review panel and to the committee.

Miss Mountfield claimed that during the home visit, instead of organising the "very ill" Mr McHugh's immediate admission to hospital, Dr Zaman had arranged for Mr McHugh and his wife to be admitted to the Surikha House residential home, Darwen, which was registered in his name.

She said Mrs McHugh had given the committee "very clear and truthful evidence" that the doctor had told her and her husband that he knew of a very good residential home, being run by his estranged wife, who was "a good nurse and would look after them".

Mr McHugh had in fact needed immediate admission to hospital and could have died at any time in the six days between the home visit and the time he was seen by a specialist, who had immediately arranged for his admission to the Blackburn Royal Infirmary, where acute colonitis was discovered. Mr McHugh died in February 1999.

Miss Mountfield said the couple's son Michael who had written to the doctor on November 23, 1996, asking him to arrange hospital admission and urgent action because of his concern over the health of both his parents.

Mr Adrian Hopkins, for Dr Zaman, said his client had no previous history of neglecting his patients' well-being during a long career.

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