AUGUSTA — The remaining charges against a Lewiston oral surgeon is now clear of charges after the Maine Dental Board dropped the remaining cases Friday after five days of testimony spread across three months, according to the Sun Journal.
Dr. Jan Kippax is now free to practice his profession after complaints from patients that he ignored their pain, pulled the wrong teeth, and failed to provide appropriate care before, during, and after operations were dropped.
Two experts backed Kippax during the testimony, saying he did not violate the standard of care.
The dentist now has no remaining charges against him. The State dropped 32 of the 64 charges at the most recent hearing at the beginning of the month. At the end of that hearing, the Board had dismissed 28 of the 32 remaining charges.
This final dismissal of the remaining four charges brings to the investigation to a close, although the state has the option of pursuing a new case against him from among the scores of allegations it opted to put aside.
“We'll deal with whatever happens next,” Belleau said. “I wish it never got to this point.”
Kippax has been under fire since 2016 and suffered a 30-day suspension of his license last winter after the dental board determined he lacked the skill, empathy, respect for patients and “commitment to serving his community in a safe and caring way.”
“Basically his career has been ruined by it,” Belleau told the five dental board members who heard the case. He told them “only you can try to make it right.”
Panel members expressed sympathy for some of Kippax's patients, particularly Christine Duplissis of Greene, who complained of mistreatment when she sought to have a tooth pulled in July 2015.
Board members said that the assistant attorneys general arguing for the state failed to prove that Kippax violated the standard of care.
“I knew it would play out like this,” Duplissis said. “You speak up then and nothing ever happens.”
Belleau recognized that the panel members hearing the case felt sorry for Duplissis and other patients. He told them that, given the evidence presented, they had to follow their legal obligations.
“There's only one outcome that can occur in this case, whether you like it or not,” he said.
In the end, four of the five board members voted to clear Kippax of all remaining charges. One, Rowan Morse, thought there was enough evidence to justify sanctions on one of the four counts under consideration.
When the board suspended Kippax in February, it cited 195 allegations of improper conduct with 18 patients to justify its warning that recklessness had put “his patients and staff in immediate jeopardy.”
It narrowed down the list of allegations to just 32 at the beginning of the month, dropping all but four of those due to lack of evidence.
On Friday, it expunged the remaining four. No one from the board explained why they thought last winter that Kippax posed such a threat to the public that he should be suspended immediately.
Belleau repeated a charge Friday that a board member who investigated the case – and was not among those deciding the charges – and the board's executive director were biased against Kippax and had misled the panel. The case's hearing officer, Mark Terison, said neither could discuss any aspect of the case as long as more charges could potentially be brought.
