Dr. Richard Feldman

September 27, 2016 /  Eric Andrist  /  Uncategorized

MEDICAL BOARD RECORD— 10062
DISCIPLINARY ACTIONS—License Revoked, see listing at bottom of blog post

Website

Nashville doctor faces charges of lewd, unprofessional conduct

A Nashville doctor pushing a controversial diet pill combination has been charged by the Tennessee Department of Health with lewd and unprofessional conduct in connections with several unrelated incidents.

In documents filed by department attorneys, Dr. Richard Feldman is accused of fondling two patients in separate incidents in 1993. He is also cited for screaming at a TennCare patient in March 1995, and trying to use a special police commission to gain free entry at a Starwood Amphitheatre concert in 1991.

“They are patently untrue,” Feldman said yesterday when asked about the charges. “They are unfounded and untrue. There is no reason why anybody would have brought them.”

The documents don’t identify the patients filing the fondling complaints. But Feldman and his attorney, Larry Roberts of Nashville, siad they have a good idea who the accusers are.

“They are people with another agenda,” Roberts said. “They can’t get from Dr. Feldman what they wanted: drugs. I think one of them has a police record. One an outstanding warrant, and perhaps a drug problem.

“They both work at the same place—a massage parlor.”

Feldman said the TennCare patient whom he is accused of threatening didn’t offer any proof of coverage when she came for an office visit.

In the Starwood incident, Feldman said he is the doctor on call for the facility. A Starwood spokeswoman, however, explained the arrangement differently.

“He is one of several doctors who has been called to Starwood by the acts, but not a doctor-on-call. He is not an employee” of Starwood, said Kathy Armistead, director of marketing.

In recent days, Feldman has attracted media attention for promoting a diet pill combination known as “fen/phen,” which uses two prescription drugs to help people lose weight. Tennessee does not allow doctors to prescribe the drugs for that use.

To get around that, Feldman has made arrangements with a Kentucky physician to prescribe the drugs for his patients, he said yesterday.

An attorney for the Tennessee Health Department said the arrangement appears to be legal.

“If a physician is referring a patient out of state for treatment, there is nothing illegal about that,” said Bob Kraemer of the office of general counsel.

“If a Kentucky physician is writing a legal prescription for drugs that can be legally prescribed in Kentucky, there is nothing illegal about that.”

Feldman faces a hearing before the Board of Medical Examineers to determine whether his license should be suspended. The panel of physicians and one lay person also is asked to fine Feldman $5,000.

Roberts said once Feldman gets the chance to tell his side, they believe the medical board charges will be dismissed. (LINK)—09/20/1995

Nashville doctor investigated for flying dieters to Cincinnati

CINCINNATI—Police are investigating whether any laws were broken when a Nashville diet doctor flew overweight Tennesseans to Cincinnati so he could prescribe weight-loss medications banned in his home state.

Dr. Richard Feldman said yesterday that what he did was perfectly legal.

“I’m practicing to the letter of the law,” he said.

But Sgt. John Burke, head of the Cincinnati Police Department’s pharmaceutical diversion unit, told The Cincinnati Post: “The whole practice is unusual.

Police interviewed patients of Feldman, who in November flew some of them in his own plane to Cincinnati’s Lunken Airport to write prescriptions for them, the Post reported yesterday. Feldman, a 1965 Walnut Hills High School graduate, has an office in Cincinnati.

Feldman said he is promoting a drug therapy known as “Phen/Fen,” which stands for phentermine and fenfluramine, two drugs used in combination to cause weight loss.

Other doctors use the therapy, he said. A University of Rochester study done two years ago found that the drugs cause patients to lose weight when they also followed a program of dieting, exercise and behavior modification, Feldman said.

“We follow that to the T,” he said by telephone from his Nashville office.

The Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners in 1990 banned the use of all amphetamines for weight loss. So Feldman, a family practice physician, decided to fly patients to states where he can prescribe the drugs. He is licensed to practice in both Ohio and Tennessee.

Feldman said he has treated at least 1,500 patients with the drug therapy. He no longer flies Tennesseans to Cincinnati, but sees them instead at an office in Franklin, Ky., near the Tennessee-Kentucky line.

Feldman is planning to open offices in Toledo, Cleveland, Columbus, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and two Florida cities.

His company started out doing $250,000 in business per year and now does $3 million to $4 million, he said.

Feldman faces a disciplinary hearing before the Tennessee medical board, which licenses physicians and can suspend or revoke their licenses.

He was charged with fondling two patients in 1993 and with screaming at a patient in 1995. Feldman said yesterday those allegations are false, and he is fighting them. (LINK)—02/23/1996

Doctor called lewd, unprofessional

Hearing continues against ‘diet doc’

A stream of witnesses testified during state disciplinary hearing yesterday that they left medical appointments with Dr. Richard Feldman feeling embarrassed, ashamed and shocked by the way he had treated them.

“He listened to my back, then he put his hand up my blouse and pinched my nipple,” said a 22-year-old woman who testified that she went to see Feldman in December 1993 suffering from cold-like symptoms.

A 38-year-old legal secretary, who said she went to Feldman once in June 1994, told the Board of Medical Examiners that Feldman made lewd comments about her breasts and asked if they were real.

In all, 11 people took the stand as witnesses for the state health department in a case charging Feldman with lewd and unprofessional conduct.

The state is asking that Feldman be fined $6,400 and that the board consider appropriate action on his medical license.

His attorneys said the allegations against Feldman are false and that the owner of an adult entertainment business called Dawn’s Whirlpool is out to “get him.” The lawyers also attacked the credibility of some of the witnesses who worked at the business, and claimed it was a front for prostitution

“They use phony names. Two are convicted felons,” attorney Larry Roberts said. “They get paid in cash but won’t say if they pay taxes.

“Consider the nature of the witnesses and the likelihood that they do not speak the truth.”

However, not all the witnesses were employees of or associated with the adult establishment.

“They were patients,” said Angela Bonovich, attorney for the state health department.

“Credibility is a very important issue but their attempt a making these witnesses incredible was basically due to their employment.”

Among the testimony offered yesterday:

•A 24-year-old former employee of Feldman’s said while she was alphabetizing files in his medical office in 1989 he walked into the room naked and laughed when she told him to put on some clothes. The woman aid she left the job a month or so later.
•A 49-year-old severely depressed man with diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure said Feldman told him he was dying and to, in effect, get his affairs in order. “He told me I had too much wrong with me to live too much longer,” the man said.
•A 30-year-old former employee of a Murfreesboro Road “massage parlor” said Feldman offered her $50 for oral sex, but she refused when he would not wear a condom.

The woman, who said she has since left that job and has become a born-again Christian, said she saw Feldman remove a wart from the hand of the parlor owner and then ask, “I get to pick any girl I want, right?” as payment for services rendered.

No criminal charges have been brought against Feldman in the cases, though one woman said she had consulted a lawyer and another testified she had cooperated with police and wore a hidden microphone to try to record Feldman during a visit to the adult entertainment business on Murfreesboro Road.

Feldman is known locally in connection with the popular “Phen-Fen” diet pill combination, which is prohibited in Tennessee but available in Kentucky.

The hearing continues at 8:30 a.m. today at Legislative Plaza. The state has another six witnesses.

After today, the case is expected to recess until the board’s next meeting on Oct. 15-16 when Feldman’s attorneys will begin to call witnesses. (LINK)—09/18/1996

Ex-patient testifies doctor raped her

‘I thought it was my fault’

A former patient of Dr. Richard Feldman testified yesterday that Feldman raped her in 1983 while showing her around his home.

“He pushed me down on the bed and jumped on me,’ said the woman, who had just turned 18 at the time. She said she had gone to his office for an appointment but left with him to go to lunch when he said the office was closed.

“We had sex maybe two minutes,” she testified.

Attorneys for Feldman tried to portray the woman, who in the years since the incident has been accused of drunken driving and child neglect, as unbelievable.

“She continued to see him for six years and 13 visits,” said attorney Larry Roberts.

“Was it Dr. Feldman that made your life so terrible or was it the fact you have an alcohol problem?” asked Feldman’s other attorney, Kenneth Lawson.

Feldman is before the State Board of Medical Examiners, facing charges of lewd and unprofessional conduct.

The woman, who said she didn’t come forward before now because she didn’t think anyone would believe her, was the last of more than a dozen witnesses called by state Health Department attorneys. Several testified that Feldman took sexual liberties with them; others said he verbally harassed them for being TennCare patients.

Feldmdan has been in the news recently for his popular diet clinic that arranges for patients to go to Kentucky to get diet pills banned in Tennessee. It’s not hte first time the one-time congressional candidate has challenged medical board authority. He sued in the early 1980′s for the right to advertise his medical practice.

The woman testified she showed up for an appointment at Feldman’s office to find him outside. He told her there must have been a mixup and asked her to lunch. On the way, they stopped at his house to pick up some papers.

Once in the house, he jumped on her, she said.

The woman said they then drove back to the medical office and she immediately left. No criminal charges were ever filed.

“I thought it was my fault…He was a doctor. He had his own radio station. His own airplane.”

The woman said during subsequent appointments Feldman would feel her breasts during exams and she would tell him to stop.

She said she told a drug rehabilitation counselor of the incident in 1993.

If found guilty of the charges, Feldman could be fined and his medical license revoked, suspended or restricted.

The state ended its case yesterday. (LINK)—09/19/1996

Diet Doc needs ‘impulse control’

Feldman traded care for sex, medical panel says

Nashville physician Richard Feldman engaged in a pattern of unprofessional conduct with patients and traded medical care for sex, a state medical panel ruled yesterday.

The state Board of Medical Examiners three-ember hearing panel put Feldman on a year’s probation, fined him $2,500 and ordered him to get counseling for an “impulse control” problem.

“He exhibited a pattern of poor judgment at best, and he seems to get on this thing of young women,” said Dr. Jeffrey Fenyves, one of three physicians on the panel.

“I won’t use the word sexual, but that’s the biggest theme,” Fenyves said later, explaining the “impulse control” reference.

The ruling ended a formal disciplinary process that began late in 1995 when Feldman, 49, was first brought up on charges. In complaints to the state, former female patients charged that he touched them sexually during medical exams and made lewd comments about their bodies. One said he raped her.

Former employees also claimed he sometimes walked around the office nude except for a towel draped around his middle.

“I have never seen so many of these type of charges,” said Health Department attorney Angela Bonovich. “Fifteen witnesses is a lot.”

The physician review panel held that there had not been enough evidence to support a rape charge, but termed Feldman’s actions inappropriate.

The female patient, who was 18 at the time of the incident, testified she went to Feldman’s office for an appointment but found him closing up for lunch. She said she went to lunch with him at his suggestion, and during a stop at his house Feldman raped her.

Feldman, who runs a chain of diet clinics in several states, admitted he had sex with the woman, but said it was consensual.

His attorneys portrayed several of the witnesses as unbelievable because they worked at a “massage parlor” reputed to offer prostitution.

The board found many of the witnesses believable. Particularly troubling was Feldman’s trading his physician skills for sex at an adult entertainment establishment he frequented, board members said.

“I think a profession is denigrated by that, “Fenyves said.

State attorney Amanda Crowell said Feldman picked his victims because of their social and economic vulnerability, and used that to his advantage.

“He chooses his victims carefully,” Crowell said. “They are not worthy of believing.”

Witnesses in Feldman’s behalf painted him as a charmer who had women throwing themselves at him.

Feldman said afterward he was pleased with the outcome. He noted that the board had not found any problems with his actual medical expertise.

He said he would follow orders to enroll in the impaired physician’s program. Already, he said, he’s made some lifestyle changes, including choosing not to visit adult entertainment establishments.

“That’s all history. That’s in the past,” he said. (LINK)— 01/23/1997

Testimony paints Feldman’s rather strange bedside manner

When Nashville dermatologist David Horowitz met him 27 years ago, Richard Feldman, he recalled, was an aggressive, fast-talking car salesman.

Later, as Horowitz watched his friend pursue a career as a doctor, he noticed that same attitude.

“Richard sometimes thought doctor but talked car salesman,” Horowitz testified last week at a disciplinary hearing where Feldman’s medical license was on the line.

“Sometimes he is so outspoken, everybody cringes. Richard is Richard, Sometimes different.”

Different or no, the Tennessee Bord of Medical Examiners, after hearing of allegations of misconduct dating as far back as 1983, gave feldman orders to shape up.

The Nashville “diet doctor” was fined, put on probation and ordered to get counseling for “impulse-control” problems. After hearing from numerous patients and employees complaining that Feldman touched them inappropriately, and made disparaging and belittling comments, and a charge of rape from one patient, the board said enough.

It determined that Feldman, 49, had acted unprofessionally. But it did not pull his license to practice medicine.

To some, that amounted to a mere slap on the stethoscope.

Feldman’s practice is a specialty called bariatrics that deals with obesity and weight loss. He co-owns a regional chain of diet clinics that tout “phen-fen,” a popular diet-pill regimen. Even here, he has thumbed his nose at the medical establishment: The pills are banned in Tennessee, so his clinics are in nearby states.

It’s a safe bet that Feldman’s diet-clinic clients are mostly women, and that appears to be where he gets into the most trouble.

Sounding a bit trite in testimony last week, Feldman said he was “interpreted the wrong way” by accusers because of his personality. But some of the incidents he has admitted to can only be interpreted one way.

Take, for instance, his admission that he asked two young sisters to fly with him to Florida for the weekend. One of the women had come to him for emergency contraception, the so-called morning-after pill. Feldman got her the prescription, but as she and he sister were leaving, he admits he asked them more than once to go away for the weekend.

“I believe I invited her and her sister down. Not in a dating way,” Feldman said.

They declined, but he pursued. “I may have said, ‘Are you sure you don’t want to go to Florida?’” Feldman testified last week.

Or take the case of the 18-year-old he admits to having sex with in his home in 1983. The woman called it rape. Feldman said it was consensual. The panel fo three male physicians concluded that the state attorneys had not proven it was rape, thus Feldman was just as likely to be telling the truth as the woman.

But how does a doctor and a patient, who came to his office for an appointment and found it closed for lunch, end up at his house having sex? Just weeks before she had come to him with a bleeding ulcer, and he had her admitted to the hospital. One of the medical board members said she probably viewed him as someone who had saved her life. She trusted him.

“I hope Dr. Feldman feels he made some poor judgment in regards to this complaint,” said on of the panelists. “I would still categorize it as unprofessional conduct even without rape spelled out.”

And as the board pointed out, any one of the complaints they accepted as fact by itself may not mean much. Taken together, however, they show a disturbing pattern of conduct unacceptable for a physician who has taken an oath to help rather than hurt.

Some of the board’s question to him alluded to whether his judgment was affected by other factors. Was he on any medication? Could it be some unexplained side effect of any drug, perhaps? Had he had any surgery?

“I am an open, friendly type fellow unless you are trying to get drugs,” Feldman testified.

Looking at who his accusers were, it’s not difficult to see how he has gone unchecked for so long. They were often young women of low-economic class. He also treats prostitutes who, as witnesses on his behalf pointed out, feel shunned or uncomfortable with the West End medical establishment.

He has even bragged that he is the “union Rescue Mission for TennCare patients,” implying he takes the poor when other doctors don’t.

Is the implication, then, that it’s OK for him to take a few liberties with them? They’re just prostitutes. Maybe they deserve it?

Or they’re poor, so they ought to be grateful. And go ahead and let them complain, who’s going to believe them? Or even still, who’s going to care?

State attorneys argued as much, striking a chord with the board.

Enroll in the Tennessee Medical Foundation’s rehab program for drug-addicted and alcohol-abusing doctors. Clean up your act, the board ordered.

A tall order, even for a fast-talking salesman. (LINK)—01/26/1997

Diet doctor at odds with Health Department over treatment

Department lawyers want Nashville diet doctor Richard Feldman fined and suspended for not cooperating with treatment to help him control his impulses.

But Feldman says he has cooperated, spending more than $11,000 on six weeks of treatment at a Kansas psychiatric clinic and participating in psychotherapy and meetings for sexual addiction.

Feldman, a family practitioner who also runs a chain of weight loss clinics was put on a year of probation by the Board of Medical Examiners last February.

The board’s lawyers accused him of a variety of misconduct, including sexual contact with patients.

Feldman denied the allegations. The board did not find he committed the most serious violations, his lawyer said.

However, Feldman was fined $2,500 and agreed to receive impulse control treatment.

The board’s lawyers prepared an order saying Feldman had three months to “obtain the advocacy” of Dr. David Dodd, who specializes in treating doctors with problems.

If Feldman didn’t get Dodd’s help, his license to practice medicine would be automatically suspended, the order said.

Feldman and his lawyer say the order is inaccurate, because board members never said Feldman should be automatically suspended.

Feldman and lawyer Larry Roberts say they never got a chance to review the order before it was entered.

Roberts said Feldman attempted to work with Dodd. But Feldman decided he couldn’t meet three conditions set by Dodd:

•That Feldman engage in ongoing treatment at the Kansas clinic.
*That Feldman agree to abstain from alcohol or other mind-altering substances.
•That Feldman stop seeing patients, Roberts said.

Feldman said he doesn’t have any alcohol or drug problem, and he didn’t want to give up his clinical practice, Roberts and Feldman said.

In addition, ongoing treatment in Kansas was extremely time consuming and expensive, and Feldman felt he could get effective counseling in Nashville, he said.

Feldman sees clinical psychologist Lawrence Weitz, who believes “that Dr. Feldman is not impaired in his ability to practice medicine and that he poses no threat to his patients or the public,” Roberts wrote to the board.

At Dodd’s recommendation, Feldman attends meetings for sexual addiction, Roberts wrote.

In November, a Menninger Clinic doctor reported that Feldman “did not show evidence that he is currently impaired in his ability to practice medicine,” Roberts wrote.

Feldman hasn’t engaged in any ethical violations during his year of probation, Roberts wrote.

No board hearing has been set. (LINK)—03/12/1998

Diet doctor’s ads arouse the doubts of health officials

Nashville diet doctor Richard Feldman is once again at odds with the Tennessee Department of Health, and this time he could lose his license to practice medicine.

Lawyers for the Department of Health plan to bring formal charges against Feldman before the state Board of Medical Examiners, alleging that he falsely advertised the benefits of his weight-loss program and gave discounts to patients who referred their friends to him.

Department of health officials allege that Feldman ated unethically when his company, known as Doctor’s Diet Program, used postcards to advertise the weight-loss program. The postcards advertised 50% off to those who bring a “diet buddy” in on their next visit. The postcards also said dieters could lose 30 to 60 pounds in 90 days.

In response, Dr. Feldman said that Health Departments’ Office of General Counsel should go after doctors committing malpractice.

“Why pick on Tennessee’s No. 1 weight-loss clinic?” Feldman asked. The doctor also denied that the advertisement made a false claim about the program’s weight loss success.

“You can lose 30 to 60 pounds in 90 days,” he said.

Feldman admits that the postcards never should have advertised discounts to patients who bring a “diet buddy” to the clinic.

“We do not do that any more,” he said.

The cards went out without his first seeing the advertisement, Feldman said.

Once it came to his attention, he stopped sending the discount offer, he said,

Feldman has been given the opportunity to show compliance with state law and has 15 days to respond in writing or he could lose his medical license. However, he insists that he will be able to keep his license.

Feldman was put on probation by the state Board of Medical Examiners in 1997 after complaints that he had inappropriate sexual contact with patients. Feldman denied the allegations He was fined $2,500 and agreed to receive impulse control treatment. (LINK)—05/08/2001

Dr. Feelbad

A local doctor who got away with molesting and having sex with female patients faces new charges—but he’s still open for business at a clinic near you

The waiting room of Dr. Richard Feldman’s diet clinic is a depressing place.

Behind the big wooden door and vertical blinds that separate the room from the street is the gloom of well trod wall-to-wall carpeting and flowers wilting in vases.

On a recent weekday afternoon, the place reeks with a humid funk reminiscent of sweaty children or unwashed dogs. About a dozen patients sit on standard-issue waiting-room chairs. The people are large, listless. Almost all are women, mostly black and Hispanic. There is one man with his wife and baby.

Two small children play and fuss around their mother’s leg. The appendage is nearly as wide as the two children combined. The mother sits slack-jawed, hands joined in her vast lap, head cocked to the side, staring into oblivion. The children at her feet giggle quietly.

On the walls hang pictures of women that these unfortunates most likely will never resemble—trim, smiling honeys in pink and blue bikinis. They have tan, slender legs, taut bellies and breasts that have not yet yielded to the inevitability of gravity.

In the middle of the room hangs another picture, this one placed higher than the others as if in the center of a slim and sexy pantheon. This picture is of Dr. Feldman, the man who started this clinic near West End Avenue. In the picture, he’s sitting in an ornate chair looking relaxed and confident. A half-moon of black hair rings his bald pate. He has a big, bushy mustache like some South American generalissimo. Sitting in the chair next to him is President Ronald Reagan.

With nine diet clinics across Tennessee, one in Los Angeles his own line of herbal supplements, and services that include Botox and other nonsurgical cosmetic treatments, Dr. Feldman has built quite a business. His ads claim that his Doctors Diet Program is “Tennessee’s No. 1 physician-supervised weight loss clinic.” His website—www.smallerclothes.com—makes the McDonald’s-like boast, “Over 40,000 patients served.” Dr. Feldman’s diet empire is so big that he needs a private plane, which he pilots, to keep tabs on his various offices.

But what many of Dr. Feldman’s patients probably don’t know is that he is a diagnosed sex addict. According to the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners—which licenses and polices doctors—Feldman has a history of molesting patients and making sexually inappropriate remarks to—and about—his staff. Those who have worked with him say that he hits on minors and employees. In the late 1990s, he settled a sexual harassment suit with a former employee for $10,000, according to court documents.

Feldman clearly loves the ladies. He loves them so much in fact, that for a time he wasn’t averse to paying—or at least swapping—for them. There’s evidence that Feldman would provide prostitutes at one of Nashville’s now defunct houses of ill repute with medical services free of charge. Well, almost free. As payment for his services, he would sample theirs.

In 1998, Dr. Feldman’s inability to control his sexual impulses with patients in Tennessee resulted in his medical license being permanently revoked in Ohio, where he attended medical school. In Tennessee, however, the medical board penalized him with a mere $2,500 fine and one year of probation. He also had to attend a treatment program for sex addicts at a high-priced clinic. When Feldman bailed on the program early, he was fined an additional $2,000 and his probation was extended to September 2003.

But this sanction didn’t prohibit Feldman from practicing medicine. Far from it. After paying his fine, he was allowed to continue practicing as a licensed doctor as long as he submitted to psychiatric treatment. He’s been seeing patients and prescribing pills ever since.

Even after Feldman ran afoul of the medical board for a third time in 2001—after some of his promotional literature violated the state’s ethical guidelines—all he received was a slap on the wrist. He paid a $1,000 fine and continued doing business as usual.

Breaking ethical guidelines in pursuit of flashy marketing seems to have become a habit for Feldman. Last month, he was brought before the medical board yet again, this time for claims made on his website regarding “mesotherapy” injections. Mesotherapy is a holistic treatment that proponents say will do everything from eliminating cellulite to reversing signs of aging. According to the medical board, Feldman claimed that his mesotherapy treatments cause a “typical patient to lose up to two dress sizes with 10 treatments.”

The medical board says that such claims are a misrepresentation, and it is threatening to hit the doctor with fines totaling more than $120,000.

But this investigation into false claims about his curative powers didn’t stop Feldman from recently launching a new ad campaign. Pictures of slim young women much like the ones that grace his office waiting room have been splashed across billboards and bus stop benches around Nashville. “34D+24+35,” they read. With just a phone call and a prescription you too can attain Playboy-perfect measurements and the attention that comes with them.

Unfortunately for some of Dr. Feldman’s patients, he gave them more attention than they could handle.

“On or about Dec. 22, 1993, Patient B was seen by Respondent (Dr. Feldman) for a follow up visit for herself and her infant daughter regarding cold-like symptoms….While conducting an examination (Dr. Feldman) placed his stethoscope under the Patient’s sweater and placed his other hand under her bra and began rubbing her breast and pinching her nipple. Patient B immediately pulled (Dr. Feldman’s) hand out. (Dr. Feldman) then grabbed Patient B’s hand and placed it on his groin…. (Dr. Feldman) ran his hand under Patient B’s panties and moved his finger around her clitoris. Patient B’s baby who was present during the entire examination started to get up. Patient B got up and dressed…. He asked if she could come back around 1 p.m. when the Nurse was at lunch. Patient refused.”

So reads just one of many complaints against Dr. Richard Feldman lodged with the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners. These were quoted at length in the 1998 board decision against him. At the time that some of the complaints were filed, Feldman was still a general practitioner and had not yet turned his practice into the weight loss juggernaut that it is today. This is not to say that he wasn’t busy. Just a week after the above incident, Feldman did it again. On Dec. 28, 1993, a 25-year-old woman whom medical board documents refer to as Patient A came to see Feldman. She had a cold.

Dr. Feldman began “examining Patient A with a stethoscope.” During the examination, he “placed his hand in Patient A’s bra and fondled her breast. As he fondled her breast, (Dr. Feldman) said, ‘What do we have here?’ ”

Patient A swatted Dr. Feldman’s hand away. He then began to examine her abdomen but quickly moved south, placing “his hand inside her panties.” Feldman then began to “rub the Patient’s pubic area” saying, “A natural blonde, I see.”

Feldman then asked his patient to remove her pants so that he could give her an injection. “Prior to administering the injection, (Dr. Feldman) placed his finger in her anus but Patient A pulled away.”

Although Dr. Feldman did not respond to repeated attempts to contact him at his office, his attorney Larry Roberts says that the women who made these allegations are not to be believed.

Roberts says that these women were “people of very questionable character. I wouldn’t believe them if they swore on a stack of Bibles.” He added that after the hearing before the medical board one of the women admitted to lying about “engaging in prostitution.”

But the medical board’s findings sided with the accusers. And as terrible as these two incidents were, the board accused Feldman of even worse. According to the medical board’s disciplinary documents, Dr. Feldman had sex with a 17-year-old patient.

The girl was a regular patient of Feldman’s. She told the doctor that she had had sex for the first time and wanted “medical information concerning sex.” When she showed up for her visit, Feldman was outside the office waiting for her. He said that the office was closed for lunch and invited her to come with him to eat.

Instead of taking her to lunch, he directed the 17-year-old to his house, where he took her inside and had sex with her. During future visits, he “continued to exhibit sexual behavior toward her.”

Roberts, Dr Feldman’s attorney, denies that the girl was a minor. “She was 18,” he says. “She testified that she had consensual sex with him and that he showed her how to use a bidet, which he had at his home. Then she drove him to his office.”

Roberts also says that Feldman continued to treat her for many months after that. Even assuming the lawyer’s version of events, the Hippocratic oath’s guidelines for the ethical practice of medicine expressly says that physicians must avoid sexual relations or other inappropriate entanglements with patients and their families.

According to the medical board documents, sex wasn’t the only thing on Dr. Feldman’s mind; he also demonstrated a sick sense of humor.

He told a patient who came to him about her back pain that “there was nothing more he could do for her and that she could put a gun in her mouth and pull the trigger.”

Another time, he was performing a pelvic exam on a woman who was on an examination table with her feet spread apart in stirrups. As Feldman was sitting on a stool between her legs, he leaned in and said “Hello” as if waiting for an echo. When the patient objected to this remark, Feldman said “that he was just joking.”

His attorney says that these anecdotes have been taken out of context. The woman Feldman advised to kill herself was morbidly obese and refused to follow his medical advice. “She was diabetic, and he told her if you’re going to keep eating poorly and living the lifestyle you’ve been living, you might as well put a gun in your mouth.”

Feldman’s linguistic dramatics haven’t been limited strictly to his patients. According to the medical board and court documents, as well as interviews with those who know Feldman, his employees are also treated to his special brand of interpersonal interaction and unique sense of humor.

Anthony Lucas, who runs a marketing and PR company in Nashville, worked with Feldman on the 34D+24+35 ad campaign. He says that when he first came to Feldman’s 29th Avenue office last year, the doctor wanted to show Lucas the efficacy of his weight loss program. Feldman did so by “pulling up the shirts of female employees” and saying, “Look at the work I did!”

Roberts says that Lucas is running a shady business and isn’t credible. “His cell phone doesn’t work, he doesn’t have a website and his office address is a P.O. box.”

Some of the acrimony between the two may also be because Lucas is considering suing Feldman for $70,0000 that he feels the doctor owes him for the ad campaign.

Roberts says that Lucas is “getting no money from Feldman” and welcomes him to file suit “sooner rather than later.”

Whatever animus exists between Feldman and Lucas, the ad man isn’t the only one who thinks that the diet doctor has acted inappropriately toward his staff.

According to a 1997 suit filed in Davidson County Chancery Court by a former business partner of Feldman’s, the secretary-treasurer of Feldman’s business accused him of sexual harassment. According to the documents, the woman settled her claim with Feldman for $10,000. When the woman later testified before the medical board about Feldman’s behavior, he tried to block her from retrieving the money, which had been placed in a mutually agreed upon account. The final outcome of that dispute is unknown because both parties signed a confidentiality agreement. TheScene contacted the woman at home, but she declined to comment.

Dr. Feldman’s attorney says that the doctor never touched the woman and that, contrary to what the legal documents at the courthouse say, the settlement wasn’t for sexual harassment.

But the medical board records show that Dr. Feldman did engage in frat boy-like antics toward female employees. On one occasion, he asked a male patient if he had seen the new nurse, the one he’d hired for her “brains.” As Feldman said this he cupped his hands in front of his chest. The same patient overheard Feldman say, “Boy, she’s got some knockers,” apparently in reference to a patient who was in an examination room.

Leslie is a pretty, 20-year-old coed with shoulder-length brown hair and a girl-next-door smile. You can catch a glimpse of her if you drive by Feldman’s office on 29th Avenue just off West End. That’s because there’s a life-sized picture of her on a billboard atop the small house that now functions as his office. It’s right above the large red, white and blue sign that reads, “YOU FOUND US, DOCTORS DIET PROGRAM” in big block letters.

In the picture, Leslie is reclining in a pink two-piece. Her hair is perfectly coifed. Beneath her, big red letters spell out, “Prescription Diet Pills.”

Leslie looks like a professional model, and she is in fact signed with a modeling agency in Nashville. But Feldman didn’t find her through her agency. He approached her as she was walking into South Street Bar.

“Will you be a billboard girl?” the then 19-year-old college student remembers him asking.

At first, Leslie was skeptical. After all, here was an older man—Feldman’s 59, according to police reports—asking her if he could take pictures of her in a bathing suit. She says she asked him pointed questions and he seemed legitimate. Still, she was circumspect enough that she wouldn’t agree to anything on the spot.

“I was out with my friends,” she says. “I told him to have his attorney send me paperwork so I would know he was for real.”

Leslie eventually agreed to work for Feldman for $1,000. In return, she would pose for billboards, bus benches and other advertising materials. For extra money she would accompany the doctor to some of his offices and talk up his products to patients.

The way she describes it, working for Feldman wasn’t such a bad gig. Except for one thing.

“He was always very, very sexual towards me…. He was a dirty old man,” she says. “He would get a little close for my comfort.”

Leslie says that she rebuffed his advances and “made it clear that this was going to be strictly professional.” She even went so far as to tell him, “I’m not here to date you.”

But still the doctor persisted. “He would always make comments,” she says. He would tell her how he would “take care of me and fly me here and there.”

Eventually the two argued because he wanted her to accompany him on a trip to his Clarksville office in his plane. She says she doesn’t fly in small planes and wasn’t about to make an exception for Feldman. “He got mad at me, and we stopped talking. That was it.”

Though soliciting models on the street is unconventional, Leslie wasn’t the first young woman that Feldman approached in such a way.

Rachel Ablondi was just 17 when Feldman approached her in a Wal-Mart in March 2005.

She was shopping with a friend when the doctor “walked over to us and asked what we thought about modeling,” the now 18-year-old says.

At the time, she expressed an interest. He was enthusiastic. “That’s awesome!” she says the doctor told her. “I need some girls to do swimsuits for me.” He called her and invited her to lunch, but she couldn’t make it. Instead, they set up a time for her to come and take some test shots.

Nervous about going to have her picture taken by strangers, the 17-year-old brought her mother along.

When she got there, she learned that Feldman—and not a professional photographer—would be taking the pictures. “He was using a cheap snapshot camera like the kind you get at Walgreen’s or something,” she says.

“I kind of felt awkward because I had my swimsuit on and the poses were kind of sexual. I felt out of place.”

Her mother felt the same way. “My mother was fine with this at first but…she said the poses made her feel uncomfortable because they were very sexual and very…out there, I guess you could say.”

She says that Feldman took about a half-dozen pictures and promised to send her copies. He didn’t.

“I was supposed to get pictures from him and never got a call.” She says that her calls to him went unreturned.

Ad man Anthony Lucas says that this impromptu auditioning of girls Feldman picked up on the street was not part of his PR plan. Lucas says that he only hires professional models from legitimate agencies.

But Feldman had other ideas. “He would call me from the strip club at 2 o’clock in the morning” and say he’d found a hottie. “She’s going to be on our billboard,” he’d say.

When asked about Feldman’s flirting and solicitations of these women, his attorney says, “I don’t know about that, but as somebody once said, ‘There’s no harm in asking.’ ”

But there is another dark side of Feldman too: his temper.

Almost everyone interviewed for this story describes the way he berates his staff, and documents show that he could often be just as harsh to patients.

According to the medical board, in March of 1995 Feldman discovered that one of his patients was a TennCare enrollee, at which point he “screamed at her that she would be responsible for the bill and threatened her in a loud manner.” He went on to tell her that “since TennCare did not pay what (Feldman) wanted, he would have to send them a more exaggerated bill.” Then, perhaps most egregious of all, Feldman “verbally accosted” the patient’s small child, “threatening to give the 3-year-old a shot if he did not remove his foot from the respondent’s chair.”

Feldman told the patient to write a check for half of the bill. The doctor would later be reimbursed for the full amount, but according to the medical board he “did not return the portion paid by the patient.”

Feldman’s attorney says that, once again, this information is taken out of context. “The fact was that the child was in the reception room and they couldn’t calm him down and the doctor said, ‘If you don’t sit down, I’m going to give you a shot’ and the child did sit down.”

As for his treatment of the TennCare patient, Roberts says, “I know for a fact that Dr. Feldman treated a lot of TennCare patients when a lot of other doctors would not. I don’t think that he yelled at a patient just because she was on TennCare.” The attorney then suggests that the patient may have just been looking to score. “I know from my own observations that patients have come in just wanting prescription drugs and Feldman refuses.”

If this TennCare patient got a stern talking to, she got off a lot easier than Ray Cross. Cross had been a patient of Feldman’s for some time. According to a police report Cross filed in 1993, he had reason to call Feldman at 2 a.m. Feldman answered the phone and told Cross to call the office the next day. He did so and the nurse told him to “come on in.” According to the police report, Cross was shown to a treatment room where he waited for Feldman.

Eventually, Feldman walked in and recognized him. “I know you now, you S.O.B.,” Cross quotes Feldman as saying. “You’re the one who called me at 2 a.m. Get the F out of my office (sic).”

Cross claims that his doctor then punched him in the shoulder “with a closed fist.” Next, Feldman grabbed Cross by the shirt and pulled him out the door.

The worst was yet to come.

“As I went out the door,” Cross says in the police report, “he kicked me between the legs and buttocks, striking…my testicles.” Cross’ statement to police ends with the chilling line, “I believe the testicles were bruised internally.”

Though Roberts was not representing Feldman at the time, he says, “I can have anyone arrested for anything. I could say that you attempted armed robbery of me and get that done.”

Some of the women who claim that Feldman mistreated them had no such recourse.

He called one patient a “dyke or a butch” because of the way that she dressed. At least that woman got treatment.

Another one of his female patients wasn’t so lucky.

In 1994, when a patient came to Dr. Feldman complaining of a painful cyst in her tailbone, the doctor opened the appointment by making “remarks about the patient’s breasts, which…were derogatory.” He then began a vaginal exam. As he was performing the exam he “made insensitive comments about ‘an old fish’ odor.” Feldman then told his female assistant to “come closer and smell this.”

According to the medical board documents, Feldman wouldn’t even treat her. Instead the patient had to go to Baptist Convenient Care later that evening to be treated.

Feldman’s uncouth behavior hasn’t mellowed with time. Leslie, the young model that Feldman met at a bar last year, says that despite the fact that the doctor is “pulling in money,” he still, “treats his workers horribly. He has a very short temper. He blows up quickly and he cusses them out.”

Dawn’s Day Spa was a very popular brothel. For six years, between 1993 and 1999, its employees serviced Nashville’s needy men from a building on Eighth Avenue South.

Tera M. Daniels was the madam of Dawn’s until a federal judge sent her to prison for more than 15 years. According to Charlie Ray, who represented Daniels at trial, and the medical board documents, Daniels and Feldman had a little deal worked out: he would provide the ladies of Dawn’s with medical care, and they would provide him with sex.

“Feldman frequented the place all the time,” Ray says. Witnesses in the Daniels case made it clear to the attorney that Feldman took “liberties with the staff based upon his contract to provide medical service to the employees of Dawn’s Whirlpool and Massage.”

The documents from the medical board corroborate these statements. They say that Feldman “frequented a certain massage parlor” and would “exchange medical treatment, prescriptions, and/or medications for sex with the female workers.”

The documents describe one occasion when Feldman “set up a portable operating room in one of the massage rooms to remove a wart from the owner’s hand.” After the procedure Feldman asked the owner, “I can have anyone, right?”

Feldman’s attorney categorically denies that his client ever had such an arrangement.

“That exchange thing was absolutely untrue,” Roberts says. “…Those girls came to him because he would treat them when other doctors refused to do so.”

Most galling is the fact that the very agency in charge of protecting the public from such delinquent doctors did next to nothing to stop him. The Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners found that Feldman molested, abused, insulted, robbed and took advantage of patients, had sex with a minor, frequented a brothel and treated his own employees poorly. Yet the agency, whose self-stated mission is to “safeguard the health, safety and welfare of Tennesseans,” gave Feldman little more than an administrative slap on the wrist and a vacation at a fancy clinic.

This weak-kneed response stands in stark contrast to the decisive actions taken by the Ohio Medical Board—a state where Feldman used to hold a medical license—when it discovered Feldman’s Tennessee shenanigans.

“The members of our board thought that his behavior was totally abhorrent,” says board spokeswoman Joan Wehrle. “Permanent revocation was the only appropriate action.” She went on to say that if Feldman’s primary place of business had been Cincinnati, rather then Nashville, it is “more than likely” that his license would have been permanently revoked for his behavior.

The Tennessee medical board took a slightly different—and surprisingly lenient—posture. In its initial 1997 order, the board required Feldman to pay a $2,500 civil fine and serve one year of probation, during which time he could still practice medicine. Part of his probation required that Feldman obtain the advocacy of a respected physician. In this case, the board paired him with Dr. David Dodd of Vanderbilt’s Physicians Health Program. Dodd, who has worked to treat physicians with mental or emotional illness, was supposed to do the same for Feldman. If Feldman complied with the treatment regimen, Dodd would speak on his behalf before the medical board.

According to court documents, Dodd recommended that Feldman go to a specific psychiatrist at the Menninger Clinic in Houston, Texas. After a few days at Menninger in March 1998, Feldman was diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder and sexual addiction.

Court records also state that the psychiatrist at Menninger recommended that Feldman return to the clinic for six continuous weeks of treatment. He stayed for half that time and then checked out. When he got back to Nashville, he failed to communicate with Dodd and lost Dodd’s advocacy as a result.

Dodd did not return calls for comment.

Eventually—though the court documents do not specify exactly when—Feldman returned to Menninger and finished the program. He also attended Sex Addicts Anonymous meetings and began seeing a psychologist who testified that Feldman had “made real progress.” But it was too little too late, and in August of 1998 the board extended Feldman’s probation to five years.

Even as it increased the punishment, the medical board made its priorities abundantly clear. This statement prefaced the board’s sanctions: “This action is taken so that this physician can continue to provide proper and adequate care to the citizens of the State of Tennessee….”

Dr. Arthur Caplan, chair of the Department of Medical Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania, is not at all surprised that the state medical board let Feldman off easy—not once, not twice, but three times.

“The problem with medical boards is that they see their jobs as to keep doctors in practice, not to protect the public.”

Caplan should know. For years, he sat on the New York State medical board.

“These boards look at doctors as their colleagues,” he says. “The first priority of the medical board is, ‘Let’s not take this resource offline.’ ”

Caplan also says that the very nature of doctors is to look at human flaws as symptomatic and therefore treatable. “They tend to see things more as diseases or illnesses that need treatment rather than as criminal behaviors that need to be punished.”

Perhaps with these new allegations the medical board means business. The notice of charges submitted by the board in May accuse Feldman of fraud, deceit, gross malpractice, incompetence and negligence.

In short, the board is saying that Feldman’s claims about the miraculous effects of mesotherapy treatment are lies.

The treatment itself is rather simple. According to an industry trade group, mesotherapy—created in 1952 by a French physician—is the practice of injecting a cocktail of medications, vitamins and supplements into the middle layer of the skin. The injections, sometimes hundreds in a session, must be repeated for 10 sessions to be effective. A 2003 ABC news investigation on the treatment found that though results could sometimes be dramatic, the safety of the treatment was still very much an open question.

The medical board says that Feldman’s now defunct website, www.doctorsantiaging.com, made claims about mesotherapy that were unsupported by research. These included statements that patients will lose “one pound of fat per week on average…equal to four sticks of butter!”

Also troubling was that when a medical board investigator confronted Feldman about why and how the procedure worked, all he had to say was “It just works,” according to the medical board.

The case is now in discovery, and the next scheduled proceeding in the matter is in November. If the board finds against him and Feldman is penalized to the full extent of the law, he would have to pay a $1,000 fine for every time he stuck someone with a mesotherapy needle. Not $1,000 per patient, but for each injection given to a patient. Since some treatment regimens require hundreds of injections per session, the cost to Feldman could be astronomical.

Feldman might also have to pay $500 for each day that he advertised the wondrous effects of mesotherapy. According to the medical board documents, his mesotherapy website was up “at least Sept. 29, 2004 until on or about May 24, 2005.” That’s over $120,000.

And of course, Feldman could lose his license over this, but given his history with the board, that may not be in the cards.

Even if he does lose his license, it will be cold comfort to the family of one of his former patients.

Mary A. Spurgas was 44 when she died in January 1997.

Her brother Richard says that her weight had always been a problem for her and she was increasingly unhappy about it. He says she was looking for “a miracle drug so that she could live a normal life.” She found the Doctors Diet Clinic. At the clinic, she was given a prescription for Fen-Phen, an amphetamine-like diet drug that the FDA would later pull from the market because it caused a rare heart disease.

By this time, Fen-Phen was illegal in Tennessee, but Feldman had devised a way to get around the law. Newspaper reports from Ohio, where Feldman went to medical school, say that he would fly patients to Cincinnati and write prescriptions for the drug there.

Although Spurgas’ family wasn’t sure whether Mary had accompanied Feldman on one of his prescription jaunts to Ohio, they’re certain that she had to go out of her way to get the drugs.

“She was going across the border into Kentucky or out of one county and into another to even visit his office,” her brother Richard says. “There was a state issue or something.”

Mary Spurgas was a diabetic. Her brother says that she would have “crises” where she would have to be rushed to the emergency room “with blood sugar that soared to 500, 600, 700 [milligrams per deciliter].” The average blood sugar in a healthy human is between 80 and 90 milligrams per deciliter.

Fen-Phen manufacturer Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories lists diabetes as a “risk factor” for those taking the drug.

On Jan. 13, 1997, Spurgas went into a diabetic coma and died. After Mary’s death, her mother Marjorie, who lived in West Virginia, filed a $25 million lawsuit against Feldman, another doctor who worked at the clinic and the drug’s manufacturers. Marjorie thought that Fen-Phen killed her daughter.

In court documents, she alleged that Mary “died as a direct result of negligence by the defendants,” because they did not “properly assess” her as a candidate for Fen-Phen.

In court documents, Feldman denied everything, including that he had ever seen Spurgas as a patient. Feldman further claimed that the physician who did prescribe Fen-Phen to Spurgas didn’t even work for him but rather was “employed by the Clinic and not by me.” He also stated that Spurgas “withheld vital information about her true medical condition from the physicians who treated her at Doctors Diet Clinics”—namely, that she was a diabetic.

Whatever the relationship between Feldman, the diet clinic and Mary Spurgas, the lawyers for Mary’s family felt that they couldn’t prove that Feldman had acted negligently and urged them to drop the case. They did so in 2000. Marjorie died last March.

But within the Spurgas family, doubt lingers. Anne Spurgas, Mary’s sister-in-law, says that when Mary visited at Christmas 1996, just two-and-a-half-weeks before her death, she didn’t look healthy. Mary told her family that when Feldman wrote her most recent prescription she was “way below the body mass index.”

An autopsy revealed that at the time of Mary’s death, the 5-foot-5 woman weighed 112 pounds. Her body mass index would have been 18.6, according to the U.S. department of Health and Human Services, which is considered underweight. To this day, Mary’s family is puzzled as to why a doctor would continue to prescribe diet pills to someone in this condition.

“He had given her a recent prescription,” sister-in-law Anne says.

Though Feldman’s past has yet to catch up with him, it would seem that his future is bright. He just opened yet another clinic, this one in Murfreesboro, and his website promises that online sales of his diet supplements will be “coming soon.”

Online sales may well be a boon for Feldman. It might help him retain patients who might otherwise be put off by his bedside manner. Leslie the model sums up his in-person demeanor this way: “He’s a total creep.” (LINK)— 08/24/2006

Dr. Feel Worse

In response to the Scene’s investigation of Tennessee’s biggest diet doc, former patients, employees and colleagues speak out

A funny thing happened after the Scene published a story detailing the sexual, professional and ethical misadventures of “Tennessee’s No. 1 diet doctor” last month (“Dr. Feelbad,” Aug. 24). We received a number of unsolicited phone calls, letters and emails from people who Dr. Richard Feldman had abused or infuriated. Some of the missives came from former employees who had suffered all manner of humiliation at the hands of the doctor.

One message came from an ex-girlfriend of Feldman’s who described his sadistic sexual appetites in chilling detail. Another came from an employee who endured such severe sexual harassment from Feldman that she would need years of therapy to have normal relationships with men. These anecdotes describe the same recklessness, sexual molesting and harassment detailed in the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners findings against Feldman.

They also paint the picture of a spiteful and unpleasant man who holds grudges and treats subordinates and patients with a complete lack of respect. Almost all of the people who worked for or with Dr. Feldman and chose to be interviewed by the Scene requested that their real names be withheld. The reason? Fear. All of these people describe Feldman as a man who holds a grudge and carries a gun. In fact, the Scene obtained a copy of his handgun carry permit from the Tennessee Department of Safety. One source, a former nurse in his practice, says that Feldman never left home without a revolver strapped to his ankle. “He liked to show it off,” she says. “You know, I’m big, I’m bad, I got a gun.”

Feldman once assaulted a patient, Ray Cross, for calling the doctor at 2 a.m. Cross wound up filing a police report about the incident, in which Feldman, among other things, “kicked me between the legs and buttocks,” Cross says. A surgeon who knew Feldman while he had operating privileges at the now-defunct Nashville Memorial Hospital says that Feldman once waved “a very large handgun, a .44 magnum, I think,” around the doctor’s lounge in the hospital. In addition to fearing for their physical safety, these people say that because of Feldman’s wealth, he could use the courts to make life very unpleasant and expensive for them.

Feldman has also told many that he has connections in the Metro Nashville Police Department and could get away with everything from speeding to murder.

“He thinks he’s above the law,” says the surgeon.

Feldman’s feeling of invulnerability is understandable. In a career that has included documented molesting, groping, insulting, assaulting and yelling at patients, unethical business practices, a sexual harassment settlement and a wrongful death lawsuit, he faced minimal official punishment from the Tennessee medical board.

And now he’s in trouble with the board again, this time over a controversial weight loss treatment called mesotherapy. The treatment, which sometimes involves hundreds of injections of a cocktail of medications, might end up costing him a small fortune.

The medical board says that Feldman’s now-defunct website, www.doctorsantiaging.com, made claims about mesotherapy that were unsupported by research. These included statements that patients will lose “one pound of fat per week on average…equal to four sticks of butter!”

The case is now in discovery, and the next scheduled proceeding in the matter is in November. If the board finds against him and Feldman is penalized to the full extent of the law, he would have to pay a $1,000 fine for every time he stuck someone with a mesotherapy needle. Not $1,000 per patient, but for each injection given to his patients. Because some treatment regimens require hundreds of injections per session, the cost to Feldman could be astronomical.

Feldman might also have to pay $500 for each day that he advertised the wondrous effects of mesotherapy. According to the medical board documents, his mesotherapy website was up from “at least Sept. 29, 2004, until on or about May 24, 2005.” That would total $120,000.

Given the medical board’s history of leniency with Feldman, it’s quite possible that his medical license won’t be revoked. For some of his former employees and patients, it’s already too late.

Julia (not her real name) was just 19 when she went to see Dr. Feldman in the late 1980s. At the time, Feldman was still working as a general practitioner and hawking diet aids such as expensive shakes. Julia says that the doctor took a liking to her and offered her a job as one of his medical assistants. She had just graduated from high school and had absolutely no experience as a medical practitioner. At the time, she was working in retail.

She figured that Feldman hired her because he wanted to give a nice local girl a start. His true motivation, she would later learn, turned out to be more libidinal than charitable. She says he constantly brought up sexual subjects or made inappropriate remarks about her body.

Her job as his assistant involved giving shots as well as calling in prescriptions, performing urinalysis and cultures.“I would not draw blood,” Julia says now. She says she told him, “If you want me to do that, send me to school.”

Julia isn’t the first person with zero medical experience that Feldman has asked to treat his patients. Patsy Harvey, who worked for Feldman as a part-time file clerk, was also pressed into duty to administer injections. She says that Feldman never hired certified nurses because he was “too cheap to pay them.”

“He would hire some girl off the street before he hired a real nurse,” Harvey says. “He called me in there one day and wanted me to give a patient a shot.” Harvey’s experience with the medical profession begins and ends in the file room. She refused to touch the needle.

“He cussed me,” she says. The doctor then made a grab for the needle and when he did, “it stuck him” and he became enraged. “Boy, he was really mad then,” she says.

Feldman’s attorney, Larry Roberts, speaks slowly and deliberately, his voice redolent with the confidence of his cause, often ending sentences with rhetorical flourishes. He refers to the Scene’s cover story about his client as “a hatchet job of the highest order.”

He claims that one of the sources named in the story is a homosexual. Roberts says he’s “heard that people of that persuasion stick together.” He adds, “I’ve heard that you are also of that persuasion,” referring to this reporter, who, for the record, isn’t gay.

Roberts dismisses all of the allegations made against his client’s character and professional conduct, including that Feldman ever claimed to have a connection in the police department. He says that all of those who have come forward with stories about Feldman’s behavior—almost all of whom are completely unrelated but tell nearly identical stories about Feldman—all probably have an ax to grind with his client.“

As you pass through life, you can make some enemies,” Roberts says. “I’ve dealt with this doctor for a long time and his personality might be abrasive, but he is a man who cares tremendously about and for his patients.”

As for Dr. Feldman’s nurses, Roberts says, “When you visit a doctor, a lot people think that everybody you see there is a nurse. That’s not true.” He added that all of Feldman’s nurses are “licensed by the state of Tennessee.”

Addressing the motives of this newspaper, Roberts says, “You want to be able to come up with a sensational story. You just want to be able to say that you ran a doctor out of business.”

What is most surprising is that Feldman has not run himself out of business. Julia, Feldman’s former employee, remembers the doctor berating patients and making light of their medical situations.

When doing pelvic and vaginal exams, the doctor would often “make a face like something smelled bad” or “hold his nose.” Often the patients could not see Feldman, but they could see Julia, who says that it was tough for her to “keep a straight face.”

In the medical board’s 1998 findings against Feldman, they found that he exhibited similar behavior when he made comments about an “old fish odor” coming from between a woman’s legs. He then asked his female assistant to “come closer and smell this,” according to medical board documents.

Patsy Harvey, the former file clerk, says that she’d seen Feldman berate a male patient right in front of her for his appearance and odor. “He was always talking about smell,” she says.

Julia says that Feldman wasn’t much better toward his staff. Feldman once had to pay a former employee $10,000 to avoid a sexual harassment suit. According to Julia and another former employee who worked with Feldman in the early 1990s, this abuse could take numerous forms.

Julia remembers Feldman walking around the office playing a tape from a micro-cassette recorder at high volume. Feldman says that it was a recording of him having sex with his girlfriend. Another former employee says that she saw him push one of his nurses against a metal file cabinet in anger.

Julia also claims that she walked in on the doctor having sex in the office and that it was known around the practice as a regular occurrence. A former girlfriend of Feldman’s confirms this.

“I question whether that occurred,” Roberts says of the allegation that Feldman had sex in his office. But Roberts does say that “at one time Feldman had a private apartment on the premises.” His former employees say that he still does. Feldman’s employees, lovers and patients were not the only ones subjected to his bizarre behavior. His colleagues also endured strange episodes in their workplace.

The surgeon who knew Feldman at Nashville Memorial—and currently maintains a reputable local practice—says that when the hospital instituted a rule that all doctors had to be fluent in English, Feldman flew into a rage. “He just went off,” the surgeon says. “He thought it was some conspiracy to get rid of foreign graduate students that had accents. There were several, but they all spoke English.

”He says that Feldman “turned himself into an absolute asshole about it” and claimed “it was a racist place to work.”

According to the surgeon, Feldman was in the doctors’ lounge—the same lounge where he’d previously waved a gun around—and began “ranting and raving about how prejudiced all the doctors at Memorial were.” Feldman then said, “I’m going to call Sen. Edward Kennedy about this.”

The surgeon says that Feldman picked up the phone, asked for Sen. Kennedy, got connected directly to the senior legislator and had a 10-minute conversation with him.“

There’s no way he was actually talking to Sen. Ted Kennedy. None of us believed that. It was weird and pathetic.”

The surgeon also describes how Feldman would fly patients in his private plane to Cincinnati and write prescriptions for the controversial diet drug Phen-Fen there.

While on the subject of flying, Feldman would talk at length about “the mile-high club and how fun it was to have sex on a plane,” the surgeon says. Feldman told the surgeon that if he “wanted a ride, he could arrange it. I told him, ‘I don’t like private planes much.’ ”As puzzled as the surgeon is by Feldman’s behavior, he’s even more astonished that Feldman has gotten away with it for so long, even after being brought before the medical board for his aggressive sexual behavior.“

The medical board is inept,” he says. “It’s beyond belief.”

A medical board spokesperson says that the board does not comment on specific doctors when they have cases pending before the board, though she did provide a written reply in boilerplate bureaucrat-ese, complete with a 1-800 number that can be used to file a complaint.

Unfortunately for Julia, it’s too late for that. Her time with Feldman left deep emotional scars. “I was only 19,” she says. “I didn’t know what I was doing, and I needed the money…. He completely damaged my trust and made it difficult to deal with male authority figures.”

Eventually, he revealed his true reason for hiring the young woman. She says that one day he told her, “I hired you because you’re cute and I wanted to date you.”

She quit shortly thereafter but she’s had to spend time in therapy. She’s not bitter, but she looks back with regret. “He made my life a living hell.” (LINK)—09/21/20069

Birds of a Feather

Tennessee’s No. 1 diet doctor and a fallen Hispanic leader team up for a drunken melee at a Berry Hill eatery

Ismael “Robert” Chavez and Dr. Richard Feldman may be Nashville’s least dynamic duo.

The pair—both of whom have been featured on the cover of this paper in the past year for nefarious behavior—teamed up a few weeks ago and, between them, assaulted a restaurant manager, impersonated a police officer and ran from the cops. The episode saw Chavez hauled off to jail, charged with criminal impersonation and a DUI.

For those just joining this circus already in progress, here’s a little background. Chavez was the president of the Tennessee Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (THCC) until a Scene story detailing his housing scheme for illegal immigrants and his growing unpopularity among his own board, some of whom complained that he used the organization for personal gain (“Bad Man of Nolensville Road,” Feb. 15). Chavez was later deposed from the presidency of the THCC.

Dr. Richard Feldman is another matter. Last spring, the Scene reported that Feldman—who owns a lucrative chain of diet clinics in Tennessee—swapped his services as a doctor for sex with prostitutes; sexually molested, abused, insulted, robbed and took advantage of his patients; had sex with a patient who was under age; waved a gun at fellow doctors and verbally and physically berated his staff (“Dr. Feelbad,” Aug. 24, 2006 and “Dr. Feel Worse,” Sept. 21, 2006). Now Feldman is facing charges of fraud arising from claims about the effectiveness of one of his weight loss treatments.

What follows is an account of what happened on the evening of May 29, when Feldman and Chavez walked into The Yellow Porch, an intimate restaurant in Berry Hill popular with power lunchers by day and fine diners at night. The recollections are from the restaurant’s manager, who did not want his name used in this story. Calls from the Scene to the two men’s attorneys went unreturned.

Feldman was “stinking drunk” when he arrived with Chavez. The manager says that the two were “doing business with a regular customer of mine. Otherwise I wouldn’t have let [Feldman] in the door.”

The manager says that Feldman was impossible to ignore—and not just because he was drunk. “He had this bright-green, 1970s-era suit on. He looked like a leprechaun.”

Trouble started when Feldman began “hooting and hollering” at female restaurant patrons, the manager recalls. “He was making completely inappropriate sexual comments about these guests.”

The manager says he asked Feldman to keep it down but that Feldman continued to act “like an asshole. He thinks he’s Jesus or something…. I’ve worked at every club in this city, and I’ve never dealt with a 20-year-old as stupid and as much of an asshole as [Feldman].

The manager recalls finally telling Feldman, “If you want to act like you’re in a nightclub, then go to a nightclub.”

The manager says Feldman told him to “Go fuck yourself” and stood up to leave. As he did, he managed to spill every drink at the table, “all over everybody he was with.”

This both enraged and humiliated Feldman. “For a minute there, he looked like he might cry.” Instead, the manager says that Feldman attacked him. “He rushed me…came right at me.”

The manager—who says that he started working at Yellow Porch to get away from these kind of nightclub melees—put Feldman into a choke hold and was just about to throw him to the ground and “kick his ass” when Chavez stepped up.

According to a police report, Chavez “told the store manager that he had a badge and presented himself as a law enforcement officer.”

The manager then let Feldman go. After that, the manager says Tennessee’s self-proclaimed “No. 1 Diet Doctor” scurried from the restaurant and “hid in some bushes” in surrounding Berry Hill because the real cops were on the way.

Chavez—who the manager says only had one drink during dinner—then got in a white Jaguar and went looking for his pal.

When police arrived at The Yellow Porch, the manager pointed out Chavez’s Jaguar, which hadn’t made it very far. The cops pulled Chavez over. According to their report, he had a 12-pack of Budweiser—with four beers missing—in the backseat, “blood shot red” eyes and a “strong order (sic) of alcohol beverage coming from (his) breath.”

The former president of the THCC refused to take a breath or blood alcohol test and was booked for DUI and criminal impersonation. (He has a hearing scheduled for Aug. 7.) This is his second run-in with the law, the first occurring in 2001 when he was charged with disorderly conduct and driving without a license.

No charges were brought against Feldman—and the police report makes no mention of him—though he’ll never be able to eat at The Yellow Porch again.

Says the restaurant’s manager, “That guy is banned from here for life.” (LINK)—06/28/2007

Dr. Feelbad’s Back

Dr. Richard Feldman was arrested yesterday for spanking a 6-year-old child (not his), according to a police report filed in Davidson County by the child’s mother. “A reasonable person would regard the contact as extremely offensive,” says the police report, which was filed yesterday. A court date is set for the end of this month.

This has been an eventful month for Tennessee’s self proclaimed “No. 1 Diet Doctor.” Two weeks ago, the Scene reported about a drunken altercation involving Feldman at a Berry Hill restaurant, which led to the arrest of one of his dining companions. (LINK)—07/11/2007

Confederacy of Dunces

(In part…)

Long overdue prescription

A note to Tennessee doctors: Having sex with underage patients won’t get you in much trouble, but false advertising might. Just ask Dr. Richard Feldman, who had his medical license revoked last week for a year because he promoted and prescribed a questionable weight loss technique. The treatment is called “mesotherapy” and involves injecting a cocktail of medications, vitamins and supplements into the skin of obese patients. According to claims on Feldman’s website, the injections “dissolve fat” at the rate of “one pound of fat per week…equal to four sticks of butter!”

The Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners—which regulates medical licenses—found such claims fraudulent, temporarily revoked Feldman’s license and fined him $41,300. This is not the first time that Feldman has run afoul of the medical board. The doctor has been disciplined three times since 1998 for offenses ranging from sexually inappropriate behavior with patients—he had sex with a 17-year-old patient, according to medical board documents—to false advertising, though he’s never received much more than a slap on the wrist from the board. (The Ohio medical board yanked his license years ago.) These offenses and others, including a drunken melee at a Nashville eatery, have been chronicled in the Scene (“Dr. Feelbad,” Aug. 24, 2006; “Dr. Feel Worse,” Sept. 21, 2006; and “Birds of a Feather,” June 28, 2007).

As long as this suspension is enforced, Tennessee’s self-proclaimed “No. 1 Diet Doctor” may not find himself in these pages quite as much. (LINK)—02/07/2008

Nashville doctor charged in road rage incident

FRANKLIN, Tenn. – Franklin police arrested a Nashville doctor midday Tuesday after he reportedly flashed a gun at another motorist near the Cool Springs Galleria mall.

At about 12:15 p.m., police said the alleged victim was turning left from Perimeter Drive onto Mallory Lane when another driver, later identified as Dr. Richard Feldman, of Nashville, cut him off.

Police spokesperson Eric Johnson said the suspect then flashed a handgun at the victim as they were both traveling north on Mallory Lane near Crossroads Boulevard.

“A lot of times you’ll see someone get upset from something another driver did. They may yell out windows or honk their horn, it’s not a common incident when you have a weapon displayed,” Johnson told News 2.

The victim called police and provided a description of the suspect’s vehicle.

Officers spotted Feldman a few of blocks away in a strip mall on Mallory Lane and pulled him over.

“The victim in this case did the right thing by contacting police and was able to help us by maintaining a visual,” Johnson continued. “He was able to get to a safe location and get information so we could make an arrest.”

Feldman was arrested and charged with aggravated assault, a felony, and was booked into the Williamson County jail.

He has since been released on $1,500 bond.

Feldman has been in the news before.

In 2007, he was arrested on charges he assaulted a six-year-old Mt. Juliet boy. The assault charge was later dismissed.

In 2008, the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners revoked his license for advertising a medical procedure he claimed could melt away fat.

Feldman is scheduled to appear in court on the latest charges next Thursday, June 10.

Phone calls to Dr. Feldman for comment were not returned. (LINK)— 06/02/2010

Doctor faces claim he sexually assaulted worker

Dr. Richard W. Feldman isn’t new to accusations and official proceedings. The last time he made headlines was for allegedly flashing a gun at another motorist in traffic on Mallory Lane in Cool Springs on June 1.

Along with his Doctors’ Diet Program, Feldman has been the focus of extensive coverage in the Nashville Scene, reporting that flares with sexual misconduct, both verbal and physical, were common in the doctor’s office and elsewhere.

The state Board of Medical Examiners voted to revoke Feldman’s medical license in January 2008 for the way he advertised a weight-reduction injection treatment — known as mesotherapy or lipodissolve — saying it could “melt the fat” at a rate of “one pound of fat per week.” The board’s ruling stated there are no well-designed clinical studies suggesting “meaningful weight loss or reduction” to back up the doctor’s claims.

The latest accusation that could land the doctor in court comes from a former employee who said he flew her and others to Destin, Fla., sexually assaulted her while she was sleeping, and then fired her after she avoided further travel with the doctor and sought legal advice.

Filed on July 26 in Davidson County Circuit Court, the lawsuit names as defendants Feldman and his companies, the Doctors’ Diet Program and Doctors’ Diet Inc. It states that Feldman hired the plaintiff — whose name is being withheld because she is the victim of an alleged sexual assault — in mid-March as a medical technician at his Nashville office, which is located at 205 29th Ave. N.

Doctors’ Diet Program offices are scattered across the state, and there are more than two dozen in Georgia, California, Kentucky, Ohio and Florida. Because narcotics such as Phentermine (one half of the notorious Fen-Phen duo banned in the late ’90s) are prescribed at the offices, the doctor and assistants who can prescribe the drugs often travel on the weekend to the branch offices.

Doc, as she said Feldman likes to be called, requested two employees travel to and staff the Chattanooga office on Saturday, April 3. She and another worker headed out in a 1970s-era company station wagon, while Feldman and his co-pilot flew down in the doctor’s private plane.

After work, the doctor offered to fly his two workers back home, stopping in Tullahoma, Tenn., and Manchester, Tenn., to check out potential clinic locations. Feldman was known by some to pick up and head out on a whim, so it was best to carry a packed bag when traveling alongside him.

“Eventually he says, ‘What would y’all think about going to Destin?’ ” she told The City Paper in a recent interview. Her weekend was open, her son was taken care of, and “no one really wanted to say no,” she said.

The group flew south and checked into a room at the Hilton Sandestin, where the doctor appeared to be a familiar face to the staff. After dinner, the four went back to the hotel room, made some drinks and sat out on the beach a while.

“I think I was probably the last one to go to bed,” she said. “I woke up in the middle of the night.”

She said she awoke to Feldman standing next to the top bunk where she slept and sexually assaulting her with his hand. In a brief panic but still pretending to be asleep, she closed her legs, rolled over and faced the wall. She gives the same version of events in the lawsuit.

“And he said something to me, I can’t remember what he said, but when he was done, he said [something to the effect of] ‘You can thank Feldman for that’ or something nasty,” she said.

The next morning she said the doctor asked, quite explicitly, whether she remembered what happened last night.

“He’s a major pervert — major, major pervert,” she told The City Paper.

She didn’t know how to act or respond, and tried to play off Feldman’s question as a joke, she said. She spent much of the rest of the trip alone on the beach before the group boarded the plane to fly back Sunday afternoon.

“I got home, and a I never told a soul about it,” she said. “I just [tried to] forget that it ever happened. I didn’t want to talk about it, didn’t want to think about it … because I still needed my job.”

Around the doctor, she demurred about the alleged incident. But after a month or so, the same friend who helped get her the job at the clinic approached her about something he’d heard regarding her and Feldman. The doctor was apparently bragging to staff, she said, that he had performed a sexual act on her while she slept, and that she almost woke up and caught him.

Meanwhile, she was scheduled for weekend travel to a Knoxville clinic with Feldman, but to avoid him she arranged for another employee to pick up her shift.

“Eventually, I was told that word got back to him that I knew [what he’d said],” she told The City Paper. “I was called that afternoon — that Saturday I took off — and I was told I was terminated for failure to dock time.”

The job for which the mother in her mid-20s took a pay cut was gone.

Aside from sexual assault and battery, the suit states that Feldman caused emotional distress and violated her human rights by firing her in retaliation. She is seeking $750,000 in compensatory damages, as well as unspecified punitive damages.

An ugly history

As for Feldman’s other ongoing matters, his medical license remains under appeal, and he still holds an active license set to expire at the end of September 2011.

The alleged victim who accused Feldman of flashing a gun told Franklin police the doctor cut him off as he tried to exit the Cool Springs Galleria parking lot.

The man phoned in Feldman’s vehicle description to police after he said Feldman threatened him by flashing a silver handgun while the two were in lunchtime traffic near the mall. A short time later, police arrested the doctor in a strip mall parking lot on Mallory Lane.

Franklin police charged Feldman with aggravated assault for the June 1 gun incident. He was scheduled to appear in a Williamson County courtroom on Tuesday, Sept. 7, to answer that charge.

The Scene’s August 2006 cover story, which labeled Feldman “Dr. Feelbad,” told of a police report filed in 1993 by one of Feldman’s patients, describing how the doctor — angered by a 2 a.m. phone call to his home by the patient — allegedly punched the man in the shoulder and pulled him out of the office before kicking him hard between the legs.

According to the Criminal Court Clerk’s website, that charge was dismissed in August 1993.

The Scene story goes on to cite state medical board findings in the late 1990s stating Feldman and a madam of Dawn’s Day Spa, a local brothel that was later shut down, had worked out a deal to trade sex for medical care.

Calls made to Feldman’s office, as well as to his lawyer’s office, seeking comment were not returned. (LINK)—09/06/2010

Court Upholds License Revocation of Dr. Richard W. Feldman

PDF Document— 06/27/2011

Doctor Falsely Accused of Sex Crimes, He Says

NASHVILLE (CN) — A Tennessee doctor claims in court that the parent company of a news website republished false accusations that he sexually assaulted multiple women and traded diet drugs for sex.

Dr. Richard Feldman claims SouthComm Communications Inc. republished “false allegations that [he] has committed numerous sex crimes.” Feldman sued SouthComm in Davidson County, Tenn., on Friday.

He says the republishing occurred through “social media ‘viral marketing’ software” on SouthComm’s NashvilleScene.com website.

“Defendant falsely alleges that plaintiff raped a 17-year-old girl, digitally penetrated the anus of a patient for sexual gratification and sexually assaulted a woman in Destin, Florida while on vacation,” the complaint states. “Because these allegations describe criminal conduct and gross medical malpractice, defendant’s false written allegations constitute libel per se.”

SouthComm also republished a false allegation that Feldman gave prescription diet drugs to women in exchange for sex, according to his lawsuit. He says the claims were originally published in 2006.

“Because defendant’s social media ‘viral marketing’ software causes defendant’s false statements to reach new and different audiences that would not otherwise visit NashvilleScene.com, the doctrine of ‘republication’ is applicable in this matter, and prevents defendant from using the ‘single publication rule’ to escape responsibility for its wrongful acts and omissions,” the six-page complaint states.

Feldman seeks $50 million plus punitive damages for defamation and false light invasion of privacy. He is represented by Erich Bailey of Roberts, Thornton & Pence in Nashville.

SouthComm declined to comment on the lawsuit Wednesday. (LINK)—06/01/2016

Weight loss doctor chases, shoots at theft suspects

A man ran after two men he said stole his wallet, firing his gun at them multiple times just outside Green Hills mall Monday night in a Macy’s shopping trip gone bad.

Police responded to the report at about 9 p.m., according to Metro Police spokesperson Don Aaron.

Richard Feldman, 68, said he was in the process of buying his girlfriend a swimsuit at a register in Macy’s when two men ran by him, grabbing his wallet off the sales counter as they passed.

Feldman ran after the two individuals, who he said got into a white SUV or minivan-type vehicle.

“That’s when I started shooting – when he opened the door,” Feldman said. “I was in fear for my life.”

He admitted to firing several shots with the Smith & Wesson revolver he was carrying in his pants pocket. Police confirmed Feldman had a valid handgun carry permit.

Feldman, who said he lives in Nashville with a “big Trump sign,” “a German shepherd, a pit bull and a lot more guns,” said he put bullet holes in the passenger side door.

“The MNPD received no reports of a gunshot victim showing up at any hospital in regard to this,” Aaron said.

Aaron said the Macy’s loss prevention video shows the two young men shoplifting a pair of pants, grabbing Feldman’s wallet on the way out of the store and fleeing to a vehicle parked close to the door of the first floor parking garage with the doctor in pursuit.

Feldman said he is a weight loss doctor based in Nashville, but a Tennessee Department of Health license search revealed that Feldman’s license is currently revoked. His history as a medical professional is marred by disciplinary actions, hefty fines and court hearings from 1997 to 2011, according to the health department.

His license was revoked in 2008, and he was assessed $41,000 in civil penalties on several charges including unprofessional, dishonorable or unethical conduct, fraud or deceit and false advertising.

Aaron said the actions of the suspects and Feldman remain under police investigation. (LINK)—09/22/2016

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Trivia:

MD, Musician team up to do AIDS song

A Nashville musician and a family practitioner sat down together this week, wrote and recorded a song—’80s AIDS Blues—parts of which will begin airing Monday on WYHY-107 FM radio.

George Cummings, a founder of the million-selling pop-country Dr. Hook band, and Dr. Richard Feldman wrote and recorded the song, which contains the following lyrics:

“Ladies and gentlemen, you gotta be real cool. Know who you’re loving, don’t be a fool.
“You might wind up paying those eternal dues, ‘cause it’s the scourge of the century, it’s the ‘80s AIDS blues.
“It ain’t no herpes. It ain’t no clap. It’s without a doubt, a death row rap.
“You can’t see it, but you know it’s there, and if we can’t stop it, you’d better beware.
“No one’s safe, no one’s immune—you catch this bugger, “Taps” is your tune.
“It’s the scourge of the century, it’s the plague of the ages. It’s a lonesome old ‘80s AIDS blues.
“Who’s gonna make it? Who’s gonna survive? Who’s gonna be strong enough to stay alive?
“Homo or hetero, whichever way you go, you’d better get your act together, there’s some things you need to know.
“Find a good mate and settle down. Don’t be out spreading it all over town. You want to stay healthy and virus-free. You gotta keep yourself protected and just let it be.
“’Cause it’s a hard way to go and there’s a lot to lose, and it’s time we put a stop to the awesome ‘80s AIDS blues. Yeah, those lonesome ‘80s AIDS blues.”

Feldman said he was one of the first physicians in Nashville to see a patient with acquired immune deficiency syndrome, although he didn’t know at the time that the man had AIDS.

“This fellow came to see me in 1981 with a persistent cough, which I kept treating but it never got better,” Feldman said.

“I sent hi to Dr. Clyde Heflin, a pulmonary specialist at St. Thomas Hospital, and he came up with the diagnosis of pneumocystis Carinii pneumonia,” one of the opportunistic infections common among people with AIDS.

This patient eventually died, Feldman said. (LINK)—07/04/1987

Tennessee Medical Board Actions

Board orders available as of 09/27/2016:

Unprofessional Conduct

—2/11/1997

Non-Compliance with previous order—8/31/1998

Content of advertising offered material consideration for the acquisition of patients—10/01/2001

Order Modification; compliance with 08/31/1998—9/17/2003

Unprofessional, dishonorable or unethical conduct…—1/24/2008