Beltran Pages

St. Petersburg Times
HRS gets veiled look at blots on doctors’ records
November 20, 1988
By Carol Gentry

— Excerpt

… In another August case, the board pondered what to do about 37-year-old psychiatrist Beltran Pages, who had been found guilty of sexually abusing a patient while in private practice. By the time Pages came before the board, he was working at Health and Rehabilitative Services’ Miami hospital for the criminally insane.

Board members suspended Pages’ license for three years, but agreed that the suspension could be put on hold while he was appealing his case as long as he stayed at the hospital, which has only male patients. (Pages resigned the day a Times reporter showed up to look at his personnel file.) A new board member, Dr. Edward A. Dauer, said he thought it would be all right to let Pages keep practicing “as long as he works for the state and doesn’t go into private practice.”

That attitude troubles Mitchell D. Franks, a top official on the attorney general’s staff.

“We don’t believe the state or its institutions should be a dumping ground . . .,” he said. “We don’t subscribe to the position that it’s okay to practice medicine in government institutions (when) you can’t hang out your shingle for the public.”