The Invisible Doctors: How Britain's Medical Regulator Lost Track of Who It's Licensing

The facts are straightforward and damning. A cross-border investigation comparing overseas medical misconduct records with the UK’s General Medical Council register identified 22 doctors working in Britain with no public record of serious overseas sanctions.

Dr Sujan Thyagaraj lost his medical license in New Mexico in 2019 after administrators found he had sex with a patient in his office during the same appointment in which he prescribed her a powerful opioid. He fled the United States when law enforcement attempted to collect his DNA. He was later charged with sexual assault in absentia. That criminal case eventually halted, but his medical licenses in California and Texas were also revoked. Applications to practice in Montana, Hawaii, and Guam were all rejected based on his New Mexico suspension, which appeared on the first page of Google search results.

In January 2025, the GMC granted him a UK medical license. He began treating vulnerable psychiatric patients at Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust.

Dr Sattar Kadhem had his Swedish medical license revoked in June 2023 after repeatedly misreading patient scans. The Swedish medical board documented errors that included missing a large blood clot, air trapped in lungs, bone abnormalities, a spine fracture, and misdiagnosing a bowel obstruction. Patient harm was only avoided because colleagues spotted his mistakes. He was placed on three-year probation in 2021 for incompetence that could impact patient safety, then had his license revoked when he failed to meet probation terms. Norway subsequently revoked his license based on the Swedish decision.

Kadhem continued working in UK radiology, screening NHS patients through private contractor Hexarad. He was only suspended and then fired after The Times approached his employer with the investigation findings.

Dr Ajit Pothen discharged Denise Barnes from Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham despite her breathing difficulties. She died shortly afterward. He was struck off in the UK in 2021 for lying about his suspension in the Netherlands and for wrongly discharging Barnes. He lost his Dutch license in 2022. Despite being barred from practice in two countries, Pothen currently works as a doctor in Germany, where patients can still book appointments with him.

The pattern repeats across the 22 identified cases. One doctor was found to have sexually harassed colleagues in Canada. Another is on the run from stalking charges. A third was convicted in the US following an assault charge. In each case, the GMC either failed to discover publicly available information or decided this information should not appear on doctors’ public profiles.

The Regulatory Black Hole

Here is what the investigation methodology reveals about the GMC’s vetting process: reporters used a computer program to compare names and biographies of doctors disciplined abroad with names of doctors registered with the GMC. Where matches appeared, they verified these were the same individuals.

This is not advanced intelligence work. This is basic cross-referencing of public records, the kind of background checking that any competent employer conducts before hiring. Some of the disciplinary notices were published by overseas regulators and could have been found through search engine queries. Others were not public but could have been obtained if the GMC had requested information from overseas medical regulators.

The GMC requires doctors to prove they meet practice standards and provide evidence of good standing in countries where they previously worked. The system depends entirely on doctors volunteering information about their own misconduct and overseas regulators proactively sharing disciplinary records. When doctors lie and regulators don’t check, patients become test subjects in a system that has abandoned verification.

The scale of potential exposure is considerable. As of May 2025, of NHS England’s 148,000 doctors, 57,000 are non-UK nationals. The investigation identified 22 cases through manual cross-referencing of available records. The actual number of doctors practicing in the UK with undisclosed overseas sanctions is unknown because no systematic checking occurs.

The Accountability Mirage

Health Secretary Wes Streeting called the findings “horrific” and “a serious failure in our medical regulatory systems that I will not tolerate.” He ordered urgent clarification from the GMC about vetting processes and instructed NHS England to identify the status of these doctors.

This response follows a familiar pattern in British institutional failure: serious problems are discovered, officials express outrage, urgent reviews are announced, and the system continues operating as before.

The GMC’s response to The Times was equally predictable. A spokeswoman stated that doctors “should be under no illusion about their duty and responsibility” to disclose information that might affect their ability to practice safely. The regulator emphasized that professional guidance makes this “very clear.”

Notice what is absent from this response: any acknowledgment that the GMC itself failed to conduct basic verification checks. The statement places full responsibility on doctors to self-report their own misconduct while ignoring the regulator’s complete failure to independently verify the information doctors provide.

Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust’s response to the Thyagaraj case demonstrates the same evasion of responsibility. The trust stated it would be “factually inaccurate” and “libellous” to suggest it only took action after The Times approached it for comment. The trust then repeatedly declined to say when it discovered Thyagaraj’s US misconduct. This is not a denial. This is a legal threat designed to avoid answering a direct question.

The Historical Pattern

This is not the first time the GMC has failed to track doctors with problematic overseas histories. Dr Ajit Pothen’s case occurred in 2018, seven years before the current investigation. Denise Barnes died because a doctor suspended in the Netherlands was permitted to work NHS shifts without the GMC or the employing trust checking whether he was in good standing with his previous employer.

Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust confirmed that Pothen “did not disclose his full employment information at his appointment” and was referred to the GMC and dismissed after Barnes’s death. When The Times requested any “lessons learned” reports completed by the trust following this case under freedom of information laws, the trust confirmed it had no record of any such report.

A patient died in 2018 because basic employment checks were not conducted. Seven years later, the same systemic failures persist. No lessons were learned because no institution completed the exercise of identifying how to prevent similar incidents from happening again.

What This Reveals About British Institutions

The GMC is not a political organization. It is a professional regulator established to protect patients by maintaining standards in medical practice. Its core function is verification: ensuring that doctors licensed to practice in the UK are competent and safe. This investigation demonstrates that the GMC has stopped performing its basic regulatory function.

Three possible explanations exist for this failure:

Incompetence: The GMC lacks the capability to conduct basic background checks that newspaper reporters can complete with publicly available databases.

Resource constraints: The GMC lacks sufficient funding or staff to verify the credentials of doctors seeking UK licenses.

Institutional indifference: The GMC knows about the gaps in its vetting process but has decided that closing them is not a priority.

Each explanation is damning. The first suggests regulatory collapse. The second suggests that patient safety has been defunded to the point where basic verification is impossible. The third suggests an institution that has lost sight of its fundamental purpose.

The most likely explanation combines all three. An under-resourced regulator staffed by people who have processed paperwork for so long they have forgotten what the paperwork is supposed to prevent has created a system where nobody is actually responsible for checking whether doctors are safe to practice.

The Missing Safeguards

Professional regulation exists because markets cannot solve information asymmetries in complex services. Patients cannot evaluate whether their doctor is competent. Employers cannot independently verify overseas medical credentials. Regulators exist to solve this problem by maintaining registries of qualified practitioners and excluding those who pose risks to public safety.

When regulators fail, the entire system fails. Dr Thyagaraj’s US misconduct appeared on the first page of Google search results, but the GMC granted him a license anyway. His applications to practice in Montana, Hawaii, and Guam were all rejected based on the same publicly available information that the GMC either did not find or did not consider disqualifying.

The contrast is revealing. US state medical boards with far less funding than the GMC managed to identify and reject applications from a doctor whose misconduct was a matter of public record. The UK’s General Medical Council, with its larger budget and broader regulatory authority, approved the same application.

This is not an isolated administrative error. This is systematic regulatory failure.

The Real Cost

Nicola Bradley’s mother, Denise Barnes, died in 2018 after being wrongly discharged by Dr Ajit Pothen. When told that Pothen continues to practice in Germany, Bradley said: “He gave my mum her death sentence and he’s still living, and he is still working treating other people. What is it going to take before he actually loses his license? Is somebody else going to die under his care?”

This is the question that matters. Not what the GMC’s procedures are supposed to be. Not what politicians say they will review. Not what trust spokespeople claim about their processes. What actually happens when regulatory systems fail: people die, and the doctors responsible continue practicing elsewhere because no effective international mechanism exists to stop them.

The investigation identified cases where patient harm was only avoided because other colleagues spotted mistakes. This is the healthcare equivalent of relying on luck. Dr Kadhem missed blood clots and fractures on scans. Those errors were caught by other staff. The next error might not be.

The Broader Decline

Medical regulation is not a politically divisive issue. Nobody campaigns on a platform of weakening patient safety standards. There is no ideological debate about whether doctors with histories of sexual assault or professional incompetence should be allowed to practice. This should be the easy stuff: basic institutional competence in performing straightforward verification checks.

If British institutions cannot manage this, what can they manage?

The GMC has one job: maintain a register of doctors who are safe to practice medicine in the UK. It is failing at that job not because of political interference or resource constraints or complex trade-offs between competing priorities. It is failing because it has stopped checking whether the information doctors provide is true.

This is institutional decay at its most fundamental level. Not the failure to achieve ambitious goals or navigate complex policy challenges, but the failure to perform basic administrative functions that have been standard practice for decades.

What Competent Regulation Would Look Like

The solution is not complicated. Every doctor applying for UK registration should have their overseas practice history independently verified through direct contact with foreign medical regulators. Any gaps in employment history should be investigated. Any disciplinary findings should be publicly disclosed on the GMC register. Employers should be required to check GMC records before hiring doctors and conduct their own verification with previous employers.

None of this is revolutionary. This is how background checks work in every other sector. Banks verify employment histories. Schools check criminal records. Hospitals should verify medical credentials.

The Times investigation demonstrates that the current system relies entirely on doctors volunteering information about their own misconduct. This is not regulation. This is an honor system with life-or-death consequences.

The Investigation’s Implications

Twenty-two doctors were identified through manual cross-referencing of available databases. This is not a comprehensive audit. This is what three news organizations found by checking public records. The actual scale of the problem is unknown because the GMC does not conduct systematic checks.

How many other doctors are practicing in the UK with undisclosed overseas sanctions? The GMC cannot answer this question because it does not know. The regulator responsible for maintaining standards in medical practice has no idea how many doctors on its register have been disciplined abroad.

This is not a gap in the system. This is the absence of a system.

The Unchanging Response

Health Secretary Wes Streeting’s statement promises urgent action, but the response to institutional failure in Britain has become entirely predictable. Scandal emerges. Officials express outrage. Reviews are announced. The problem persists.

The GMC knew that doctors could apply for UK licenses without disclosing overseas misconduct because this is exactly what happened in the Pothen case seven years ago. No systematic changes were implemented after that failure. The same gaps remain because fixing them would require the GMC to fundamentally change how it operates.

Asking doctors to self-report their own misconduct is easier than conducting independent verification checks. Processing applications quickly is easier than investigating gaps in employment histories. Trusting that the system works is easier than acknowledging it has failed.

The Pattern Across Institutions

Medical regulation is not unique. Similar failures occur across British institutions. Universities that don’t verify academic credentials. Local authorities that don’t inspect care homes. Regulators that don’t regulate. The common thread is the same: systems designed to provide oversight have become paperwork exercises where nobody checks whether the information provided is accurate.

This is what decline looks like. Not dramatic collapse but gradual erosion of institutional competence until basic functions are no longer performed. The forms still get filled out. The processes still exist. The actual verification work no longer happens.

What This Means For Patients

If you are treated by an NHS doctor, you have no reliable way to know whether that doctor has been disciplined overseas for professional misconduct or even criminal activity. The GMC register might show a clean record even if the doctor lost licenses in multiple countries. Your employer conducted more rigorous background checks before hiring you than the NHS conducted before granting your doctor a license to practice medicine.

This is the reality that the investigation reveals. Not a worst-case scenario or a hypothetical risk, but the actual state of medical regulation in Britain in 2025. The system designed to protect patients has stopped protecting patients because the institutions responsible for oversight have stopped conducting oversight.

The doctors identified in this investigation are not the problem. They are the symptom. The problem is a regulatory system that has abandoned its core function while maintaining the appearance of competence.

Britain has built institutions that look like they work but don’t. The GMC has a website, processes, and procedures. It issues licenses and maintains a register. From the outside, it appears to function. The investigation reveals what happens when you actually check: the verification doesn’t occur, the safeguards don’t work, and patients are exposed to risks that should have been identified and prevented.

This is not a failure of one regulator. This is emblematic of broader institutional decay where the mechanisms designed to maintain standards have become performative exercises disconnected from their stated purposes.

The question is not whether the GMC will implement reforms after this investigation. The question is whether British institutions remain capable of performing the basic administrative functions that competent governance requires.

Based on the evidence, the answer is increasingly unclear.