Toronto’s so-called Robin Hood doctor has lost his licence to practise medicine for six months and must cough up fees in excess of $60,000, among other disciplinary measures meted out by the province’s College of Physicians and Surgeons on Wednesday.

Dr. Roland Wong was found guilty of professional misconduct in December 2012 after exaggerating the allergies of his welfare-dependent patients so they could access special diet allowances of up to $250 per month — a practice that saw him bill the government for $1.8 million over four years.

Dr. Wong claimed his goal was to help low-income patients whose welfare cheques were insufficient to purchase healthy food.

He was paid about $60 to fill out each patient’s forms, the college panel heard, collecting $718,000 in 2008 alone.

The doctor landed in trouble in 2009, when an auditor general’s report alleged he was filling out the forms without confirming patients’ dietary restrictions or allergies. That report noted the cost of special diet allowances in Ontario had risen to $67 million from just $5 million in 2003, prompting concerns that the system was being widely abused.

Among the complainants who prompted a college investigation was Rob Ford, at the time a mayoral candidate.

“A doctor is there to be a doctor, not to advocate for the poor, or to be the official Opposition in government through taxpayers’ money,” Ford told the Canadian Medical Association Journal in 2010.

The college committee struck to determine Wong’s penalties says it took into account the fact that Wong’s “primary purpose was helping patients,” though it called his efforts “misguided.”

The six-month licence suspension, which begins in two weeks, “is a significant sanction which should give Dr. Wong, the profession as a whole, and the public at large a clear message that maintenance of integrity and public trust is of paramount importance,” the committee wrote in its penalty report.

But six months is a long time for Wong’s patients to wait to see their doctor, said Peter Rosenthal, Wong’s lawyer, speaking on behalf of his client Wednesday.

“The panel knew that Dr. Wong services patients who have difficulty finding doctors, not just for a special diet allowance, but for all sorts of other maladies. They’re the ones who are really going to suffer from this six-month suspension,” he said.

Rosenthal added that his client was “OK” after the penalty decision, but “he has to absorb this, obviously.”

The college has also ordered that, within 30 days of resuming his practice, Wong take training on medical record keeping and on the completion of special diet allowance forms.

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A college-appointed official will monitor Wong’s record keeping on a monthly basis until satisfied that professional standards are being met, among other monitoring of the doctor’s practices.

Wong has also been ordered to pay a fine of $35,000 to the minister of finance within 30 days, and must pay the college’s legal fees, amounting to $26,360.