Curtis Murray-Watters

1/7/2022

On September 28, 2021, the Inquiries, Complaints and Reports Committee (“the Committee”) made a decision regarding information it obtained about the practice of Curtis Murray-Watters. Following investigations by this College, the Committee identified concerns with C Murray-Watters’ practice. The Committee determined that these concerns are serious in nature and that the concerns regarding C Murray-Watters’ billing practices and management of conflicts of interest were substantiated by the available evidence. The Committee decided to require that C Murray-Watters appear before the Committee to receive a caution regarding the issues of concern. The caution will appear in full on the College public register.

Caution

Following the College’s investigation, the Committee identified serious, and apparently substantiated, concerns related to your past billing practices and management of conflicts of interest while you practised at (a clinic). In particular, the Committee was concerned that you did not appropriately disclose to patients your financial interest in selling or dispensing medical products, the dispensing may have been driven by revenue generation and may not have been clinically indicated and that you inappropriately waived insurance co-payment amounts for your patients. 

The Committee wishes to emphasize your professional obligations under the College’s Conflict of Interest Standard. As per this Standard, physiotherapists who recommend that their patients purchase products or services in which the physiotherapist has a financial interest must disclose the nature of this financial interest to their patients in advance. In such situations, physiotherapists must also advise their patients that if they choose an alternative supplier this will not adversely affect their care. As regards the assessment you conducted of (an insurer's) undercover investigator, it appeared that you failed to meet this Standard of practice. 

The Committee was also concerned about your past billing practices at (a clinic) and in particular, your practice of waiving insurance co-payments for patients. You should be aware that as per the Professional Misconduct Regulation under the Physiotherapy Act, 1991, it is an act of professional misconduct to submit a charge for services that you know, or ought to know, is false or misleading. The College has adopted a zero-tolerance policy for inappropriate business practices. Such practices serve to bring the physiotherapy profession into disrepute and can have far ranging consequences and costs for physiotherapists and the public. As a result of such misconduct, employers and insurers have often responded by scaling back insurance benefits, thus negatively impacting access to care for many people.  

The Committee also had some concerns about the assessment you conducted of (an insurer's) undercover investigator and your clinical documentation for this patient. It was the Committee’s opinion that the assessment you conducted, while not at the most egregious end of the spectrum, was at least cursory. Furthermore, despite the fact that the undercover investigator reported having been involved in a motor vehicle accident, you did not appear to conduct appropriate follow-up regarding the nature of this accident, nor did you adequately document this information in the patient record. While the Committee acknowledged the pressures you reported from management at your workplace, in the Committee’s opinion, this did not excuse the apparent shortcomings in your patient care. 

The Committee expects that you will reflect on its comments and on the seriousness of your conduct, and that concerns of this nature will not come to the College’s attention in the future. 

Since 2017, as required by law, the College has been posting cautions on the public register. A caution is a decision made by the ICRC when a concern raised in a complaint or in a formal investigation is sufficient to require the physiotherapist to attend before a panel of the ICRC to receive feedback from the panel on how to prevent similar concerns from arising in the future. A caution does not involve a finding of wrongdoing, professional misconduct or incompetence and is not disciplinary in nature.  

File: 2020-0113
Delivered: March 1, 2022

9/28/2021

On September 28, 2021, the Inquiries, Complaints and Reports Committee (“the Committee”) made a decision regarding information it obtained about the practice of Curtis Murray-Watters. Following investigations by this College, the Committee identified concerns with C Murray-Watters’ practice. The Committee determined that these concerns are serious in nature and that the concerns regarding C Murray-Watters’ billing practices and management of conflicts of interest were substantiated by the available evidence. The Committee decided to require, therefore, that C Murray-Watters appear before the Committee to receive a caution regarding the issues of concern.

Since 2017, as required by law, the College has been posting cautions on the public register. A caution is a decision made by the ICRC when a concern raised in a complaint or in a formal investigation is sufficient to require the physiotherapist to attend before a panel of the ICRC to receive feedback from the panel on how to prevent similar concerns from arising in the future. A caution does not involve a finding of wrongdoing, professional misconduct or incompetence and is not disciplinary in nature.  

File: 2020-0113
Status: Completed