Dr. Jonathan Sadai, A Newport Beach Allergist, Surrendered His Medical License Yesterday, Faced 10 Allegations Of Wrongdoing


A Newport Beach doctor, who was facing 10 allegations by the state's medical board, surrendered his license yesterday at 5 p.m. 

The state board launched its investigation of Dr. Jonathan Sadai after he allegedly charged for services he didn't render in 2008. 
A female patient, referred to only as KS in official documents, went to Sadai in July 2008 to get a second opinion about her potential allergies. The patient previously went to a Kaiser physician for testing and was told she didn't have any food or environmental allergies, the document says.

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Sadai charged the woman $400 and told her he was going to send her blood off for testing using a new method developed by Johns Hopkins University. The next month, the woman called Sadai's office to get her results, the document says, and was faxed a list of foods and environmental allergens with a handwritten “+1,” “+2,” “+3” or “+4” next to each one. The numbering system, which apparently showed a range of sensitivity to different allergens, suggested that she was allergic to more than 50 things.

Since the results varied so drastically from the ones she got from the Kaiser physician, she called Sadai's office and asked for the initial report. Sadai, however, told her he didn't release original test results. The patient then returned to the Kaiser doctor for another test, which showed, again, that she had no allergies. The patient called Sadai's office again to ask for the initial report and he told her he'd sent them and then hung up on her.
A week later, Sadai sent the patient another copy of the same hand-written results and his copy notes from her visit, but still not the initial results. Two months later, the medical board sent Sadai a letter asking for all of the patient's medical records. He sent them the same things he'd sent her. A week or so later, he sent the patient what he called the “actual lab report,” only it was exactly the same as the previous report, only it used a different numeric scale. 
Aside from giving his patient the runaround, Sadai also allegedly lied to a board investigator. In 2009, he said the testing was done on a machine in his Laguna Niguel office, but by the next year he admitted that it was done on a machine in the back of a van in his parking lot, adding that he didn't know whether the person who had performed the testing was qualified or licensed. What's more, he said he had no original copies of the results, because they had popped up on a computer screen and he'd merely copied them down.
When the board asked him for the phone number of the person who'd done the testing, he gave them a number that had been out of service since 1998. 
As a result of his mistreatment of the patient and failure to work with the board, Sadai faced 10 causes for discipline: dishonesty or corruption, fraudulent medical records, false medical records, gross negligence, repeated negligent acts, incompetence, failure to maintain adequate and accurate medical records, failure to provide medical records to patient, failure to provide medical records to the board and general unprofessional conduct. 
He didn't admit to the allegations, but agreed that at an administrative hearing he might be found guilty and agreed to surrender his license, meaning he lost all rights and privileges to work as a doctor in California. And, if he ever tries to reinstate his license all of the allegations will be deemed true. 
A call to Sadai's office went unanswered, but the answering machine has the following message: “Thank you for calling the allergy group, the doctor has retired and closed his practice.”

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