Spanish doctor who killed patient struck off

Dr Marcos Arel Hourmann worked for Dyfed Powys Police for more than two years despite being under investigation and subsequently convicted of manslaughter in Spain, a General Medical Council (GMC) disciplinary hearing was told.

A fitness to practise panel ruled his concealment of the truth was “fundamentally incompatible with his continuing to practise medicine”.

He had injected an 82-year- old cancer patient already at death’s door with a lethal dose of potassium chloride to “rid her of the unbearable suffering” in 2005.

Spanish court papers said she was “begging for her suffering to be brought to an end” and Dr Hourmann may have thought, incorrectly, “she was begging him to end her life”, the GMC heard.

Within a year, the 52-year-old doctor had come to the UK and started working for the West Suffolk NHS Trust before getting another job with Carmarthenshire NHS Trust and working for the police as a forensic medical examiner.

But he failed to tell any of his new employers about the continuing police investigation in Spain or the subsequent court case.

It took four years for the case to be resolved in Spain, when Dr Hourmann was convicted in Tarragona, and sentenced to one year in jail, which was suspended, and a further sentence of four months, 15 days jail, substituted by him paying a fine of E1,620 euro (£1,359).

Dr Hourmann, who qualified as a doctor in Argentina and now lives in Spain, did not attend nor was he represented at the GMC hearing in Manchester.

In a letter to the panel, he stated he was unfamiliar with medical rules that state if a doctor has been cautioned, charged or convicted of a criminal offence, anywhere in the world, they must declare this to the profession’s regulatory body – the GMC.