As seen in The Morning Call Online
A psychiatrist who once ran the psychiatry department at Lehigh Valley Hospital was put on probation for having dated a patient and failing to record medicines he prescribed for her.
Dr. John F. Mitchell, who lives in Zionsville [Pennsylvania] and has a private counseling practice in Salisbury Township and an outpatient clinic in Emmaus, agreed to pay a fine of $7,000 and take a course in ''boundary violations'' to avoid losing his license for three years, according to the State Board of Medicine, which ruled on the violations in March and published its ruling on Wednesday.
The order alleged that Mitchell engaged in a personal and romantic relationship with a female patient and prescribed medicines to a patient without recording the prescriptions. State officials did not identify the patient or the person who filed the complaint.
Mitchell, 54, has been a psychiatrist for 24 years. He came to Allentown in 1984 and was chief of psychiatry at the former Allentown Hospital, which became Lehigh Valley Hospital-Allentown, from 1985 to 1988.
Mitchell said he had stopped treating the patient for more than a year before the relationship started, but that regulations require at least a two-year wait. He said he did not record the prescriptions he wrote for the woman because at the time she was no longer his patient.
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