Physician Behind Surgisphere Scandal Switches Medical Licenses

Sapan Desai has inactivated his license in Illinois, where multiple malpractice lawsuits against him are pending, and obtained a new one in Ohio.

Written byCatherine Offord

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Update (November 2): Sapan Desai has requested that his newly obtained Ohio medical license be inactivated, according to documents obtained by The Scientist. In correspondence sent a few days after this story was published, Desai wrote to the State Medical Board of Ohio that he would “not be practicing medicine in the state of Ohio.”

Sapan Desai, the embattled vascular surgeon and CEO of the now-defunct Surgisphere Corporation, has inactivated his medical license in one state and obtained a license in another.

Each US state has its own licensing board, and generally a doctor requires an in-state license to practice medicine there—although Illinois is one of many states that is granting emergency authorization to some out-of-state physicians in response to the COVID-19 crisis, provided they have an active license and are in good standing.

According to public records held by the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional ...

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Meet the Author

Catherine Offord
After undergraduate research with spiders at the University of Oxford and graduate research with ants at Princeton University, Catherine left arthropods and academia to become a science journalist. She has worked in various guises at The Scientist since 2016. As Senior Editor, she wrote articles for the online and print publications, and edited the magazine’s Notebook, Careers, and Bio Business sections. She reports on subjects ranging from cellular and molecular biology to research misconduct and science policy. Find more of her work at her website.
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