A plastic surgery center in Winter Park accused of refusing to provide services to individuals with HIV and Crohn\u2019s disease has reached a settlement agreement, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.<\/p>\n
U.S. Attorney Gregory W. Kehoe<\/a>, of the Middle District of Florida, announced the settlement with Azad Plastic Surgery, led by Dr. Kamran Azad, in a news release Monday.<\/p>\n Under terms of the agreement, APS will pay $40,000 in compensatory damages, split evenly between the two complainants, according to the news release. The complaints alleged violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act<\/a>.<\/p>\n When asked for comment, the facility\u2019s office manager emailed a statement saying APS chose to settle even though it disagreed with \u201ccertain characterizations of the events leading to this matter.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOur decisions were guided by considerations related to patient care and surgical safety only,\u201d the statement said. \u201cNevertheless, we have chosen to resolve the issue and continue moving forward with a focus on our patients and our community.\u201d<\/p>\n The U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office opened its investigation after a man filed a complaint alleging the center refused to provide services because he is HIV positive<\/a>, the news release said. During that investigation, the office received a complaint from a woman alleging she was refused services because she has Crohn\u2019s disease,<\/a> a type of inflammatory bowel disorder.<\/p>\n DOJ investigators determined APS discriminated against the complainants by refusing to schedule them for consultations because of their medical conditions. The news release said the facility relied on incorrect assumptions and stereotypes about HIV and Crohn\u2019s disease, not current medical knowledge, when deciding to deny them access to services.<\/p>\n The settlement requires the facility to adopt and enforce a nondiscrimination policy against individuals with disabilities, train all personnel on the ADA\u2019s nondiscrimination requirements, and report all disability discrimination complaints to the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office for the next two years.<\/p>\n The complaints fell under Title III of the ADA, which prohibits public accommodations \u2014 including professional offices of healthcare providers \u2014 from discriminating against individuals on the basis of disability. In general, it prohibits them from deny an individual, on the basis of disability, the opportunity to participate in or benefit from its goods or services.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A plastic surgery center in Winter Park accused of refusing to provide services to individuals with HIV and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":709015,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[28,2808,97,252,253,2558,983,3,6011,5262,230043,296537],"class_list":["post-709014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-business","tag-florida","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-orange-county","tag-social","tag-social-business","tag-winter-park"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=709014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/709015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=709014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=709014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=709014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}