Kansas psychiatrist Douglas Geenens Disciplined by Kansas Board of Healing Arts

Douglas Lee Geenens, D.O., is a Kansas City area physician who specializes in psychiatry and child psychiatry. He has operated mainly in the Overland Park area of Kansas but also was also licensed in Missouri until October 2007. The Kansas Board of Healing Arts suspended his medical license for six months on December 11, 2004 but suspended all but seven days of the suspension. The reason for this disciplinary action was that Dr. Geenens engaged in a social and then sexual relationship with a former patient – the wife of a colleague who had come to him for treatment of “depression and marital issues”, according to the Kansas Board’s Order, which you can see here: http://www.ksbha.org/boardactions/Documents/geenens_04.pdf

Dr. Geenens married this former patient in Key West, Florida on December 15, 2007.

Dr. Geenens was under investigation by the Missouri State Board of Registration for the Healing Arts but quietly “retired” his license in October 2007 when it was due for renewal. This, according to an official letter from the Board closed the Board’s case against him.

Dr. Geenens was the treating psychiatrist of 13-year-old Matthew Miller, who hanged himself after one week on the Geenens-prescribed antidepressant Zoloft in July 1997. Zoloft is manufactured by the the Pfizer pharmaceutical company. According to a deposition Geenens gave in a lawsuit filed by Miller’s parents against Pfizer, Geenens was (and possibly still is) a highly paid Pfizer speaker, frequently giving promotional talks on Zoloft. See the story here (particularly paragraph 28): http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1285024/posts.

Some time between December 2004 and the present, the Kansas Board of Healing Arts re-opened an investigation of Dr. Geenens, due in part perhaps to complaints filed by Citizens Commission on Human Rights, citing his ongoing relationship with the former patient as a continuing violation of rules and regulations governing the conduct of physicians.

On October 29, 2008, the Kansas Board of Healing Arts filed a 23-count disciplinary Petition against Dr. Geenens, seeking to suspend or revoke his license for numerous alleged violations. Twenty of the counts listed in the Petition allege that he prescribed psychiatric drugs without sufficient examinations. It also cites “boundary issues” in connection with improper relationships with patients. In one case, the Petition states that Geenens told a patient, “You need to get a divorce, move to the Plaza and we could have breakfast together.” The document has not yet been published by the Board, but you can see local news about it by searching in the Kansas City Star archives for: “Kansas medical board files disciplinary petition against Leawood psychiatrist” by Alan Bavley, The Kansas City Star, 30 October 2008.