NHS Trusts have been warned not to rely on recruitment agencies to carry out the required checks on locum doctors after a ‘fake doctor’ was able to practise in the UK for more than two years, despite not being not qualified to do so.

The Daily Telegraph reports Levon Mkhitarian, from the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, committed the fraud after being struck off from practising medicine by the General Medical Council (GMC), which had found him practising as a doctor without being qualified to do so. He reportedly had some medical training but was not allowed to work unsupervised.

He subsequently obtained work at a Kent hospital in 2013, after creating a fictitious CV in the name of a local doctor, along with a fake bank statement, energy bill and a letter purporting to be from a medical surgery.

By this point he had worked for two-and-a-half years after convincing five NHS trusts, a charity and a private medical centre that he was registered to practise as a medic.

Commenting on the case, Peter Walsh from patient safety charity Action against Medical Accidents told the Telegraph that any NHS trust should make adequate checks to ensure that the locum doctors they take on are suitably registered and qualified, and should not rely on agencies to carry out these checks.

Meanwhile, Dr Paul Stevens, medical director at East Kent Trust, one of the trusts for which Mkhitarian worked, told the Telegraph it is currently reviewing its procedures to determine if the trust needs to strengthen its identity checks when working with agencies.

According to the paper, locum agencies that hired him included HCL Doctors, Medics Pro and Midas Medical Recruitment, which has since closed with its assets purchased by Pertemps Network Group in 2013.

Midas was condemned earlier this year for a case involving recruitment consultant Ross Etherson, who during 2009 and 2010 before Pertemps acquired the assets of the company, was found to have faked doctors' CVs, embellished their experience and added false references from consultants. At the same time, Judge Robin Johnson criticised NHS management, alleging that some managers failed to carry out basic checks on doctors they were employing.

HCL Workforce Solutions, which placed him in London North West Trust in 2011, said they reported concerns to the GMC in April of the same year.

Recruiter contacted HCL and Medics Pro for comment but had not heard back by press deadlines.

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