AC-2025-LON-000160 - [2025] EWHC 3006 (Admin)

The PCC considered the charges against Mr Mobasseri at a hearing held between 25 November and 13 December 2024. The committee comprised a lay chair, and two dental professional members, one a dentist and the other a dental nurse. Witness statements were supplied to the PCC from: Ms McLauchlan, a caseworker at the GDC; one of the dental nurses who had worked with Mr Mobasseri, who was referred to as “Nurse A”; Ms Van Loon, a Senior Clinical Advisor at NHS BSA; and from Mr Mobasseri. Of those, oral evidence was given by Nurse A and Mr Mobasseri. Two experts who had been instructed on behalf of the GDC also gave evidence: Mr Bateman and Mr Scott, for opinions in respect of the matters alleged under charges 1-3 (which were referred to as the clinical charges) and charges 4-7 (which were referred to as the probity charges) respectively.

I have set out above a summary of the determinations that were reached by the tribunal. I will refer to some of the reasoning and more detailed findings in the course of dealing with the grounds of appeal below. It is obvious that the PCC found Mr Mobasseri’s conduct to have been very serious. He was found to have been dishonest in retrospectively altering numerous patient records, including to mislead the NHS as part of its monitoring process, and to have been dishonest in submitting inappropriate claims for treatment.

At the start of its determination relating to sanction, the PCC helpfully summarised its findings in relation to his conduct in the following way:

“25.

Between 2019 and 2020 you failed to carry out BPEs and sufficient treatment planning in respect of a number of patients for whom you were providing Invisalign orthodontic treatment.

26.

Between 2019 and 2021 you also routinely failed to maintain contemporaneous records in the Practice’s record keeping software. You instead used Microsoft Word to make most of your clinical notes. This was not an adequate standard of record keeping. The notes lacked sufficient clinical detail and were sometimes incomplete. They were also being created and stored separately to the Practice’s record keeping software, and were not easily accessible to other treating clinicians.

27.

When a sample of your clinical records was reviewed as part of the GDC’s investigation into your fitness to practise, it came to light that, in two instances, radiographs had been stored in the records of the wrong patient. This too amounted to a failure to maintain an adequate standard of record keeping.

28.

Between March and November 2020 you retrospectively altered the clinical records of 29 patients when transferring the notes you had made using Microsoft Word into the Practice’s record keeping software. These alterations were made by you to the records for a total of 125 appointments which had taken place up to two years earlier and consisted of adding (and in some cases altering and deleting) significant clinical detail which was not included in the contemporaneous Word documents. The alterations were not minor or purely editorial, such as correcting typographical errors, but instead altered the substance of the clinical record and provided substantially more clinical detail than had originally been recorded.

29.

You made the alterations to create a permanent clinical record which would give the false impression that you had maintained an adequate standard of record keeping and had carried out more detailed examinations and investigations than that which had been contemporaneously recorded. Clinical findings were also retrospectively included which did not appear in the contemporaneous notes. False BPE scores were added by you in respect of numerous appointments to give the impression that you had carried out a BPE to screen for periodontal disease at those appointments, as required under the FGDP Guidelines, when you had not in fact carried out such examinations.

30.

The records for 14 of the 29 patients had been retrospectively altered by you on 19 October 2020 in response to a request from the NHS for the disclosure of those records. You knew that those records were deficient and you extensively falsified them in order to mislead the NHS as part of its monitoring processes. You falsely added considerable clinical detail to support the corresponding claims for treatment which had been submitted to it for payment^[ (Footnote: ¹)^] and to give the false impression that your recording keeping met an adequate standard.

31.

Your conduct in altering the records of these 29 patients was dishonest.

32.

Between 2018 and 2019 you dishonestly submitted 6 inappropriate claims for treatment to the NHS. You had deliberately manipulated the dates of treatment and other details either to claim for additional UDAs to which you were not entitled or to make it appear that you had completed more UDAs in the preceding contract year, potentially avoiding a clawback for underperformance of the contract.”

In its conclusion on sanction, the PCC recorded that:

“69.

Having regard to all the circumstances, the Committee determined that no lesser sanction than erasure would be sufficient to meet the aspects of the over-arching objective of promoting and maintaining public confidence in the dental profession and of promoting and maintaining proper professional standards and conduct for members of that profession.”