Maria Bastas

Introduction

Maria Bastas is an Australian general practitioner who worked at Marrickville, in Sydney’s inner west, and whose medical registration was cancelled after the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal found that between 2015 and 2022 she engaged in an inappropriate personal and sexual relationship with a patient, inappropriately prescribed medication to him and failed to adequately document her care and treatment. The Health Care Complaints Commission prosecuted the complaint. The Tribunal found the complaints proven in its decision of 10 March 2025 and, in protective orders imposed on 23 April 2026, cancelled her registration for two years.

Background Information

Bastas practised as a general practitioner at Marrickville. General practitioners hold the prescribing pen for most of the Australian health system, and the ethical rules that bind them treat a sexual relationship with a current patient as incompatible with safe practice: the consulting room gives the practitioner detailed knowledge of a patient’s body, medications and vulnerabilities, and a doctor who becomes romantically involved with a patient while continuing to treat — and to prescribe for — that patient is judging her own conduct in her own case. The complaint against her was prosecuted by the Health Care Complaints Commission, NSW’s specialist health regulator, before the Tribunal, the state’s senior disciplinary forum for registered health practitioners.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Tribunal findings. The findings below are the formal adjudications of the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal in a case prosecuted by the Health Care Complaints Commission. They were found proven in the Tribunal’s decision of 10 March 2025. The sources report no criminal proceedings arising from the conduct.

It was alleged that between 2015 and 2022, while working as a general practitioner at Marrickville, Dr Bastas engaged in an inappropriate personal and sexual relationship with a patient. It was further alleged that she inappropriately prescribed medication to that patient and failed to adequately document aspects of her medical care and treatment of him. The two limbs travelled together in the Tribunal’s reasoning: the relationship converted her prescribing into self-review, and the documentation failures left the clinical record unable to show what had been prescribed or why. In its decision of 10 March 2025 the Tribunal found the complaints proven and found Dr Bastas guilty of unsatisfactory professional conduct and professional misconduct. In imposing its protective orders on 23 April 2026 the Tribunal cancelled her registration for a period of two years.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The Health Care Complaints Commission published its media release announcing the cancellation on 8 May 2026, a fortnight after the protective orders were imposed. The span of the case — conduct found proven seven years after it began, orders imposed a full year after the liability decision — reflects the pace of NSW health discipline rather than any doubt about the outcome: the Tribunal’s Stage 1 finding was published in March 2025 through NSW Caselaw, and the Stage 2 orders followed as a separate step. The Commission’s release names no mitigation and records no application from Bastas against the cancellation. Cancellation for two years is a mid-tier protective outcome — longer than the twelve-month cancellations the Tribunal imposes for records and honesty cases, shorter than the indefinite-tier sanctions reserved for criminality.

Current Status

Bastas’s medical registration is cancelled for two years from the 23 April 2026 orders, and she cannot practise as a doctor in Australia while unregistered. She cannot seek review of the cancellation before April 2028; any later return would require the Tribunal to be satisfied she is fit to practise. The Tribunal’s decision is published through NSW Caselaw, and the Commission’s media release remains on its 2026 media-release index. The sources report no public statement from Bastas and no appeal against either the liability findings or the protective orders. The patient is not named in any published material.

Impact on Their Career/Life

A general practice career ended in the combination the Tribunal treats most gravely outside criminality: a years-long sexual relationship with a current patient, prescribing into that relationship, and a record that concealed both. The two-year cancellation means that even a successful return in 2028 would follow at least three years out of clinical practice, and a practitioner re-entering after a sexual-boundary finding faces practice conditions the profession’s boards apply rigorously. Her case sits in a 2026 cluster of NSW practitioner cancellations published by the Commission, and like the others it removes her name from the register rather than merely annotating it.

Sources

• NSW Health Care Complaints Commission, “Dr Maria Bastas – Medical Practitioner – Registration cancelled for professional misconduct and unsatisfactory professional conduct,” 8 May 2026 — source