State alleges fraud, substance abuse in mid-Michigan surgeon’s license suspension

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A mid-Michigan surgeon’s medical license was suspended this month by a state regulatory board for the second time in two years after investigators found evidences of financial fraud, substance abuse and failing to report a criminal conviction for domestic violence in Minnesota.

The Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs along with Attorney General Bill Shuette filed both a summary suspension and an administrative complaint against Midland plastic surgeon Steven Michael Morris, alleging he kept over $45,000 in payment for procedures he never performed.

Those seven surgeries were scheduled throughout 2017 at MidMichigan Medical Center-Midland where Morris practiced, according to the complaint.

By September of 2017, Morris’s license to practice was suspended a first time after he was convicted of operating while intoxicated in Midland County in 2014 and again in 2017.

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In both cases, police found the doctor’s Porche in a ditch but Morris himself at his home apparently intoxicated, Mlive reported; in 2014 he refused a Breathalyzer but in 2017 he submitted to the test and blew a .27, more than three times the legal driving limit.

His license was reinstated in March of this year and Morris was placed on a one year probation that required substance abuse treatment and mandated that he follow LARA rules.

The latest complaint alleges that on multiple occasions Morris was intoxicated at work, drinking alcohol in his office while patients were waiting to be seen and on one occasion was so drunk he had to be carried down a set of stairs by his driver.

The doctor’s administrative staff canceled his appointments one day because he was “falling down drunk,” and some days his driver was tasked with buying him large amounts of alcohol —as many as nine bottles of wine in one day— during work hours, according to the complaint.

When MidMichigan Medical Center administrators suspected Morris was intoxicated and asked him to submit to testing he refused, and went to great lengths to pass court-ordered substance screening, including purchasing synthetic urine on the internet, the Attorney General’s office alleges.

Additionally, Morris did not report to the board that he pleaded guilty to domestic assault in Minnesota in 2017 and is on a two-year probation.

The Attorney General’s office alleges that Morris got into a drunken, heated and public altercation with his wife while the two were boarding a cruise ship; before the ship left the dock, the two were removed by Port Authority.

In other instances, Morris’s personal assistant had to physically separate the doctor from his wife during domestic disputes, according to the complaint.

Morris has 30 days to respond to the allegations in the administrative complaint and also the right to petition the decision for summary suspension of his license,

The order as it stands is temporary in the meantime, designed to protect the public and not a final determination that Morris has violated the public health code.

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