Psychiatrist Joseph P. Gurrala reprimanded for misrepresentations, other violations

June 23, 2011

On May 12, 2011, The Virginia Board of Medicine reprimanded psychiatrist Joseph Parimal Gurrala and ordered him to pay a $1,000 penalty.

This disciplinary action was the result of the Board’s investigation, which found that from approximately March to June 2007, Gurrala, while in a residency training program, provided psychotherapy and medication management to a patient outside the residency program’s supervision, and took payments directly from the patient outside the established clinical billing procedures.

Further, he failed to maintain a record of numerous encounters with the patient and, in July 2007, when asked to produce the patient’s record, he created and backdated records and presented them to his supervisor as contemporaneous documentation. 

Additionally, despite a verbal warning from the director of the residency training program in regard to patient documentation, he failed to keep records of his treatment of the patient. 

Lastly, in September 2007, Gurrala submitted an application for licensure to the District of Columbia Board of Medicine in which he misrepresented the circumstance under which he resigned from his residency training program in July 2007 and in August 2007, he provided false information to the Virginia Board physician profile system related to his graduate school education, practice areas and honors and awards.

Source: Order in re: Joseph Parimal Gurrala, M.D., License No. 0101-242248, Before the Virginia Board of Medicine.