Iowa board sanctions telemedicine doctor over child pornography conviction

By: Clark Kauffman - October 24, 2022 1:20 pm

(Photo courtesy of the Iowa Board of Medicine)

The Iowa Board of Medicine has sanctioned a Virginia physician for a child pornography conviction.

The sanctions against Dr. David A. Lapides come four months after his Iowa medical license expired and nine months after he pleaded guilty to two counts of felony distribution of child pornography in the state of Virginia.

Lapides practiced neurology via telemedicine, delivering remote care to patients in Iowa and more than two dozen other states.

The Iowa Board of Medicine had charged Lapides with being convicted of a felony and with being sanctioned by other state licensing boards. As part of a settlement agreement with the Iowa board, Lapides has agreed to surrender his expired medical license.

In September, several months after Lapides pleaded guilty to the two counts of child pornography, he was sentenced to five years in prison on each count, plus five years of probation, with the prison terms to be served consecutively.

However, all but 14 months of the prison sentence was suspended, and he was given credit for the 14 months already spent in jail. As a result, he was released immediately after sentencing.

Prior to the Iowa Board of Medicine’s action, medical licensing boards in the states of Virginia, Arizona, Tennessee, New Hampshire, Alabama, Florida, California, Kentucky, Idaho, South Carolina, North Carolina and North Dakota took action against Lapides.

Our stories may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. We ask that you edit only for style or to shorten, provide proper attribution and link to our web site. Please see our republishing guidelines for use of photos and graphics.

Clark Kauffman

Deputy Editor Clark Kauffman has worked during the past 30 years as both an investigative reporter and editorial writer at two of Iowa’s largest newspapers, the Des Moines Register and the Quad-City Times. He has won numerous state and national awards for reporting and editorial writing. His 2004 series on prosecutorial misconduct in Iowa was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting. From October 2018 through November 2019, Kauffman was an assistant ombudsman for the Iowa Office of Ombudsman, an agency that investigates citizens’ complaints of wrongdoing within state and local government agencies.