Louisiana Medical Board Puts Psychiatrist Chandra Katta on Probation; Prescribed Dangerous Drugs to Minor with No Examination

July 10, 2023

On June 27, 2022, the Louisiana State Board of Medical Examiners placed Baton Rouge psychiatrist Chandra Katta on probation for a period of one year for prescribing potentially dangerous medications to a patient without conducting an evaluation and for failure to create or maintain medical records.   

The Board initiated the its investigation of Katta upon the receipt of information from a representative of the Florida Parishes Juvenile Detention Center, alleging that in July 2020, Katta prescribed medications to a minor patient while the minor was detained, without seeing or speaking to the minor. The investigation revealed that Katta prescribed the minor patient Prozac (antidepressant), trileptal (anti-seizure), and risperidone (anti-psychotic) without any direct communication with or examination of the patient. Rather, he prescribed the medications based on conversations with the patient's aunt and after reviewing descriptions of the patient's behavior and symptoms derived from the patient's aunt and reports from other staff at the Detention Center. The patient's aunt then delivered the prescriptions to the minor patient while he was in the Detention Center.

The complaint and the patient's records were reviewed by the Board’s expert evaluator, who opined that Dr. Katta’s treatment of the patient was below the standard of care, specifically in prescribing potentially dangerous medications without an evaluation, prescribing an inappropriately high initial dose of risperidone, and documenting an examination that never occurred.

Katta’s license previously was the subject of disciplinary action by the Board in a 1995 Consent Order imposing probation. In August 1995, the Board suspended his license to practice medicine for five years, stayed all but six months of the suspension, and thereafter placed on probation for four and-a-half years, based on an investigation that revealed that he “had written and issued prescriptions for a variety of legally controlled dangerous substances to a number of patients in suspicious quantities over an excessive period of time” when in many cases, his own charts “revealed objective evidence of substance abuse by the patients.” He was reinstated without restriction in September 2013.

Source: Consent Order in the matter of Chandra M. Katta, M.D., credential no. MD.08484R, case no. 20-1-694, Louisiana State Board of Medical Examiners, June 27, 2022.