(C) Iowa Capital Dispatch
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Doctor seeking Iowa license has history of alleged harassing and threatening behavior [1]
['Clark Kauffman', 'More From Author', '- June']
Date: 2023-06-23
A Missouri doctor who is fighting to become an Iowa-licensed physician was once accused of waging a campaign of harassment aimed at a colleague who questioned his abilities.
Dr. Brett Snodgrass of Hazelwood, Missouri, is taking the Iowa Board of Medicine to court and seeking judicial review of a June 8 board decision denying him a license to practice in Iowa. That decision was based on questions pertaining to Snodgrass’ moral character, which Snodgrass argues have caused him to undergo “costly psychological testing.”
Snodgrass obtained his medical degree in 2007 but board records indicate he has not been licensed anywhere to practice as a physician.
Documents from the Missouri Administrative Hearings Commission outline the specific concerns raised by regulators in that state in 2013 and which form the basis for the Iowa board’s June 8 decision.
The commission records indicate Snodgrass attended medical school at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and earned his M.D. in May 2007. In his last year of medical school, he was accepted into a residency program at Carolinas Medical Center in North Carolina.
Within a few months, however, he was informed that he would not be accepted into the five-year general surgery residency program due to concerns over his ability to interact with, and care for, patients. According to the commission records, a supervisor wrote in an evaluation of Snodgrass that he “does not have the skills to be a caregiver of humans” and that he instilled “fear, rather than confidence, in nurses, patients and their families.”
In 2008, Snodgrass entered UMKC’s four-year pathology residency program. By December 2010, he had been placed on a remediation plan. According to commission records, the interim head of the residency program, Dr. Kamani Lankachandra, expressed concerns with what she called Snodgrass’ “substandard behavior,” chronic tardiness, disheveled appearance and “utter inability to follow instructions.”
In 2011, after 35 months in the residency program at Kansas City’s Truman Medical Center, Snodgrass was terminated from the program and not allowed to complete his final year, according to the commission records.
Snodgrass’ attorney later filed papers with Missouri licensing officials in which Snodgrass admitted having engaged in a string of harassing actions aimed at Lankachandra that resulted in a 2012 conviction on a charge of disturbing the peace.
According to the Missouri Board of Registration for the Healing Arts, Snodgrass sent, or caused to be sent, as many as 500,000 emails to Lankachandra; created a Facebook page about Lankachandra that included negative comments about her behavior and professionalism; used Lankachandra’s name and personal information – including loan documents and insurance records — to have her bombarded with mass mailings from various organizations; and posed as Lankachandra in seeking help for addiction issues from various drug rehabilitation facilities.
FBI investigated Craigslist ads posted by Snodgrass
The records also indicate the Missouri board accused Snodgrass of making “harassing and threatening” phone calls to a colleague while using a fake Indian accent, and that while at Truman Medical Center, he dictated notes for transcriptionists using a fake Indian accent.
In late 2012 or early 2013, Snodgrass was accepted into an internship program in Boston and applied for a medical license in the state of Georgia. When Georgia officials notified him they’d been informed he had been placed on probation in the University of Missouri-Kansas City residency program, Snodgrass withdrew his application and, with no medical license, lost his Boston internship.
A few weeks later, Snodgrass posted two ads to Craigslist that included a drawing of a man resembling a terrorist with a bomb strapped to his chest. One of the ads was captioned, “Rice[in] inside a can, for sale (F— UMKC],” and the other was captioned, “Looking for a consultant, labor person [meet at second floor].”
Snodgrass later told licensing officials the ads, which drew the attention of the FBI and resulted in increased security at Truman Medical Center, were posted to “get the attention of UKMC” so he could clear up any issues involving the residency program.
In November 2013, the Missouri Division of Professional Regulation notified Snodgrass his application for a medical license was being denied. In its letter, the division cited his conduct toward Lankachandra, and an alleged lack of competency as a physician.
Public officials bombarded with Twitter messages
In January 2014, Snodgrass unsuccessfully challenged the state of Missouri’s decision to deny him a license. As he later acknowledged, while that case was pending, he created and used multiple Twitter accounts to send hundreds of tweets to medical boards, senators and others in an effort to force a settlement in the dispute.
In a 2014 brief filed with the commission, his attorney argued Snodgrass was within his rights to send such tweets. While the recipients “may have preferred that they not receive all of the tweets, such is the reality of the social media world we live in,” Snodgrass’ attorney wrote.
According to records from the Iowa Board of Medicine, Snodgrass subsequently submitted applications for licensure in Connecticut and Illinois without success. In 2020, he submitted an application for medical licensure in Iowa, detailing his ongoing efforts to remain in the medical profession by working as a phlebotomist, clinical research coordinator and certified nursing assistant.
In response to his Iowa application, the Iowa Board of Medicine issued a preliminary notice of denial in July 2021. Snodgrass appealed that decision, which led to a hearing in March 2022. The board ruled that if Snodgrass chose to submit to a set of evaluations he could submit the results of the assessments to the board, which would then consider granting him a license.
According to the board, Snodgrass subsequently stated he wanted to omit any psychological testing from the evaluations and indicated he’d only agree to competency testing by an entity of his own choosing.
Earlier this month, the board voted to deny Snodgrass’ application for an Iowa license, stating that while his behavioral issues “occurred some time ago,” denial of the application was appropriate because there was insufficient evidence of rehabilitation.
“The board had hoped to remove the uncertainty about Dr. Snodgrass’s character — and now fitness given the passage of time since his training — by allowing him time to undergo approved evaluations, but he failed to successfully complete such,” the board stated in its ruling.
In seeking judicial review of that decision, Snodgrass says he was asked by the board to submit to two evaluations – an Acumen Assessment that would measure his suitability for licensure, and a clinical competency test. The Acumen Assessment, Snodgrass claims, drew unspecified conclusions based on “quasi-scientific methods,” and the board’s order for such an assessment provided the clinical competency testers with “prejudicial information” that has made a clinical competency test impossible.
The Iowa Board of Medicine has yet to respond to Snodgrass’ petition for judicial review.
When asked about the specific allegations involving Lankachandra, Snodgrass sent the Iowa Capital Dispatch a written statement that said, “My actions, sending spam to Dr. Lankachandra, were shameful and I regret disturbing the peace and my prior unprofessional conduct.”
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