ausdoc. com. au 13 FEBRUARY 2026

Heather Saxena A COURT has ordered a former Professional Services Review director to pay almost $ 2 million to an ophthalmologist after finding she did not read his written defence before sending him to a committee.

The Supreme Court of Queensland heard that O & G Professor Julie Quinlivan— the Professional Services Review( PSR) director from 2017 to 2022— referred Dr David Kitchen to a PSR committee in 2018 just 17 minutes after her staff sent her his 96-page submission.

Last year, Justice Rebecca Treston found that Professor Quinlivan had not read the submission before the referral, meaning she had failed to follow the Health Insurance Act.

While Professor Quinlivan argued she had separately printed off the submission and read it four days before it was emailed to her, Justice Treston found“ no documentary evidence” to support this, concluding that Professor Quinlivan had not read the submission“ properly or at all”.

“ There was, in this case, the absence of an honest attempt to perform the functions of her office, and that constituted an abuse of process,” Justice Treston said.

“ Accordingly, the director committed misfeasance in public office when she made the referral to establish a PSR committee into the conduct of Dr Kitchen.”

The referral regarded Dr Kitchen’ s Medicare claims for 10 items, including items for initial and subsequent specialist consultations, for corneal incisions to correct corneal astigmatism and for laser YAG capsulotomy.

Justice Treston said Dr Kitchen had first come to Medicare’ s attention after a 2017 billing mistake, for which he repaid $ 66,000 to Medicare.

The Medicare CEO then referred Dr Kitchen to the PSR.

The PSR reviewed Dr Kitchen’ s billing of 17,694 Medicare services, involving $ 3.8 million in rebates, and asked Dr Kitchen to provide clinical records for 108 patients, which totalled almost 3500 pages.

Professor Quinlivan then wrote a report on concerns over Dr Kitchen’ s billing, including that he had delegated history-taking and examinations for specialist attendances and that his consent forms were not personalised aside from the patient names.

In response, Dr Kitchen submitted a 96-page defence, along with clinical studies and opinions from three other ophthalmologists.

As part of his defence, he said delegating was“ peer-acceptable practice”, that he always checked the histories and that he took legal responsibility for them.

“ I always perform my own examination even if [ a clinical ] assistant has done so as part of their process,” he added.

“ I encourage my clinical assistants to be more educated and more involved, but this in no [ way ] means I do not examine all patients myself as well.

“ Hence the statement that‘ You did not take the patient history from your patients or perform examinations’ is simply— and seriously— incorrect.”

He also said patient consent went well beyond the forms.

“ All the consent form does is remove the risk of being charged with assault or battery. The consent is a process, not an event,” he said.

After Professor Quinlivan referred Dr Kitchen to a PSR committee in 2018, he failed to attend a committee hearing.

Although he provided a doctor’ s letter explaining his absence, Professor Quinlivan then banned him from Medicare.

Dr Kitchen then won a temporary pause on the ban and the investigation thanks to a successful Federal Court of Australia challenge. After another 15 months, Professor Quinlivan told the Federal Court that her committee referral was void because she“ did not take into account” Dr Kitchen’ s 2018 submission.

In the Supreme Court case, she maintained she was“ certain” she had at least read Dr Kitchen’ s submission, having printed a hard copy to read at home before receiving the emailed version from her staff.

However, Justice Treston said no hard copy could be found.

“[ Professor Quinlivan ] attempted to explain the loss of these hard copy documents by asserting that a‘ responsible staff member for archiving’ would come into her office and take her folders and deal with them as they saw fit,” Justice Treston wrote.

“ Elsewhere, she asserted that some employee, unidentified by name, would shred her documents‘ confidentially’.”

Professor Quinlivan said she had tried to get printing logs as evidence but was stymied by an IT overhaul in the intervening years, where“ they forgot to back up the material from the printers”.

Justice Treston said Professor Quinlivan’ s legal team did not call any IT staff as witnesses.

“ Similarly, no person from a finance department was called to corroborate the evidence that a major capital works program was carried out between 2019 and

2020 which involved the replacement of all the servers and the loss of printing metadata,” she said.

Professor Quinlivan’ s evidence was“ decidedly unimpressive” for a person of her education and experience, Justice Treston said.

“ I do not accept the director’ s evidence that she read Dr Kitchen’ s 2018 submission carefully or at all,” she concluded.

She stressed that Professor Quinlivan had

‘ I do not accept the director’ s evidence that she read Dr Kitchen’ s 2018 submission carefully or at all.’

Professor Julie Quinlivan.

not acted with“ targeted malice”, merely indifference to the potential harms.

She awarded Dr Kitchen $ 1.98 million, including $ 1.3 million for lost income as a result of his cancellation of consultations and surgeries during his legal battle, $ 408,000 for his legal costs, $ 80,000 for other expenses and $ 150,000 in damages.

Asked whether it would cover the damages, the PSR told Australian Doctor it was not a party to the proceedings.