Medical Board Disciplines Branford MD For Treating Females Alone

BRANFORD, CT — The decrees were already signed, but Tuesday the state Medical Examining Board made it official in its vote to discipline a Branford physician for examining female patients without a chaperone present.

Dr. Si-Hoi Lam, who has an office on Montowese Street, violated the terms of a 2013 consent order which prohibited him from examining female patients alone, according to documents attached to the state board's meeting agenda.

Records show that in 2013, Lam had his license "permanently restricted to require a female employee present during any examination or treatment of a female patient, and that respondent maintain signatures of the patient and chaperone and dates in the medical record. "

In that instance, the board found that during a 2008 examination, Lam "made inappropriate and/or sexual contact" with a female patient. The Connecticut Health I-Team reported that the woman testified Lam "massaged" her vaginal area.

He was also at the time fined $5,000, given a six-month probation and "course work in ethics and boundaries.

Lam violated the consent order in 2020

Then, in August 2020, an investigation was opened when a medical student employed by Lam reported that in July 2020, he "examined and/or treated four female patients in his office without a female employee (chaperone) present."

In May of this year, records show, Lam had requested that the 2013 restriction be removed, but, when the Medical Examining Board agreed to give him a hearing, he withdrew the request once he learned about the new allegations.

With the state Medical Examining Board's vote Tuesday, Lam has once again had his license "permanently restricted" to mandate that a chaperone be present when he examines female patients. And he was again fined. And, he will be reported to the National Practitioner Data Bank run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Lam, who lives in New Haven and is on the Yale New Haven Hospital physician roster, graduated from medical school in 1980 and did his residency at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx. He was licensed to practice in Connecticut in 1983.