A North Carolina medical professional has been publicly reprimanded for abandoning dozens of urgent care patients during the COVID-19 pandemic to visit who he thought was an underaged prostitute, The Charlotte Observer reported.
Licensed physician assistant Jeffrey Michael Harrell was working in Virginia on March 18, 2021 and was the only provider on duty at the urgent care center where he worked. According to the North Carolina Medical Board, he sent a text to someone who he thought was a teenage sex worker.
He then told staff members that he had a personal matter to attend to and left work. When he went to a nearby hotel for the meetup, he was met by an undercover police officer and arrested and charged with felony solicitation of a minor along with a related misdemeanor. He later pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of misdemeanor solicitation and received a suspended six-month sentence.
According to The Observer, Harrell abandoned dozens of patients, including about 20 who had come to the center to be tested for COVID-19.
In an email to his boss the day after his arrest, Harrell claimed he left his shift to run an errand and that his car had been stolen when he stopped to help another driver. He was fired the same day. The Virginia Board of Medicine reprimanded him for the prostitution incident in March of 2022.
Harrell has had disciplinary issues before. In May 2021, he was publicly reprimanded in North Carolina for prescribing medication to a female patient with whom he was having an intimate relationship. The N.C. Medical Board banned Harrell from treating female patients until he addressed “inappropriate and disruptive behavior among physicians, including sexual and non-sexual boundary concerns, as well as general professional issues.”
Image via Chad Austin Photography
