MEDICAL BOARD RECORD—35.063468 LICENSE STATUS/DISCIPLINARY ACTIONS—License Active; See medical board actions at the bottom of this blog post.
Greenville doctor suspended for sexual relationship, other violations
GREENVILLE – According to reports from our media partners at WHIO, a Greenville doctor has had his license suspended after admitting to having a sexual relationship with a married patient for approximately five months in 2013.
Dr. Shane Sampson, who had a private practice located at 122 Martz St. in Greenville, had his license suspended on Dec. 14 after admitting to allegations of the affair that were brought against him in July.
He is reported to have began the inappropriate relationship with the patient sometime on or about July 30, 2013 which allegedly continued until the end of the year.
The WHIO report also indicated that Sampson also faced allegations of “not properly documenting prescriptions of controlled substances to two different patients for a period of years, according to public documents from the state medical board”.
The doctor faces the suspension and can not practice medicine in the state of Ohio “for an indefinite period of time, but not less than one hundred and eighty days,” according to the agreement with the State Medical Board of Ohio. (LINK) — 12/30/2016
MEDICAL BOARD ACTIONS
12/14/2016: UPDATED INFORMATION AVAILABLE. CLICK ON “VIEW DOCUMENTS” BELOW OR CONTACT LEGAL SERVICES OFFICE.
07/13/2016: CITATION - Based on allegations that doctor engaged in sexual misconduct with one specified patient and that the doctor failed to obtain and/or document obtaining or accessing a report from the Ohio Automated RX Reporting System with respect to two specified patients. Notice of Opportunity for Hearing mailed 7/14/16.
“This is my 10th trophy in about 4 days. This will be my first cool mount.” —Dr. Oliver Herndon
MEDICAL BOARD RECORD—MD067328L LICENSE STATUS/DISCIPLINARY ACTIONS—License Suspended
Pleasant Hills doctor brazen in slide to drug dealer
Dr. Oliver Herndon, his face smeared with what appears to be blood, poses with a dead giraffe during a big-game hunting trip last year in Africa.
Barbara Heronsky noticed the change in January in Dr. Oliver Herndon, a specialist in pain management.
Heronsky saw him monthly for more than two years for a thyroid problem and back and neck pain. She called Herndon a “good doctor.”
But on that January visit she found his waiting room in a Pleasant Hills health center overflowing with patients.
“I couldn’t believe there was that many there at the same time as me,” said Heronsky, 56, of Brownsville in Fayette County.
Others noticed the changes earlier, including pharmacists who refused to fill Herndon’s prescriptions when the number exploded last summer. An unidentified former employee told federal investigators that when reports surfaced that two patients had died from overdoses, Herndon responded: “Load up the Jesus bus.”
Herndon, 40, pleaded guilty on Monday in U.S. District Court to defrauding insurers and drug trafficking. Investigators described him as the largest source of illegally obtained oxycodone and oxymorphone in Western Pennsylvania and said his March arrest cut supplies so much that the street value of oxycodone doubled to $40 a pill.
Herndon declined comment on Friday at his sprawling home in Peters.
“There are two sides to every story, but we’re going to handle this in the courts, not in the media,” said his attorney, Roger Cox.
Nobody can explain how a healer became a dealer.
Herndon earned his undergraduate degree from the University at California, San Diego, graduated from Stanford University School of Medicine in 1996 and completed his residency at the University of California, Los Angeles. By 1999, he and his wife, Linda, had moved to Western Pennsylvania, where he began practicing medicine.
Patients, colleagues and employees for years considered him a good doctor with a friendly bedside manner.
Something changed last year, they said.
A former employee who cooperated with investigators described Herndon as “reclusive and shy in prior years, (but) now he is quick-tempered and abrasive,” according to a federal affidavit investigators filed.
He began issuing prescriptions to a stream of younger patients, many of whom appeared able-bodied and traveled more than 100 miles to see him, the affidavit stated. By May 2011, his patient load had expanded from 200 to more than 1,000.
Herndon spent two to three minutes with a patient and would quickly write them prescriptions for powerful opiates, even though he rarely checked them medically, the employee told investigators. Patients without insurance coverage paid $200 in cash for a first visit and $100 for monthly followups. Herndon sometimes saw 150 patients a day. Though he spent little time with insured patients, he billed insurers for full visits, investigators said.
He called the system a “cash cow,” the employee said. During one six-day period in December, the employee said staff collected $60,000 in cash from patients.
Letter to pharmacists
Pharmacists grew leery at the huge increase in prescriptions and many stopped filling his orders, authorities said.
This irritated Herndon. He took the unusual step of writing a letter and giving it to patients in case they encountered difficulties in filling their prescriptions.
The Sept. 10, 2011, letter explained that Herndon’s practice grew “tremendously” and as a result, his staff was experiencing “technical problems.” He assured pharmacists that “I am NOT under investigation by the DEA.” Pharmacists told federal agents that they had never seen anything like it.
Less than two weeks later, undercover Drug Enforcement Administration agent Thomas Dunlevy visited Herndon to get a prescription. Herndon told him that he was having problems with pharmacists and that “the last time he checked, Dr. Herndon was the one with the ‘MD’ after his name,” the affidavit stated. He told Dunlevy the farther away he went, the easier it would be to fill the prescription.
It is not clear whether money problems sparked the changes in Herndon, but around the time his prescriptions exploded, he picked up the expensive hobby of big-game hunting in Africa. Last year, Herndon posted 133 photographs from one such trip to South Africa on his Facebook page. In posed pictures, he smiled next to dead zebras, alligators and primates. In one photo, his face is smeared with what appears to be blood and a dead giraffe’s neck is draped over him.
At home, according to his Facebook posts, Herndon liked to watch “SpongeBob SquarePants” on TV with his five kids.
Behavior draws attention
Herndon owns expensive property and has several loans. Washington County property records list him as owner of two Peters houses, including one on Bradford Cove that he bought in 2002 for $415,000. He bought land on Braeburn Drive for $170,000 in 2011 and opened a $861,000 construction mortgage for the property. He has three other open mortgages totaling $656,000, court records show.
The two-story, red-brick Bradford Cove home has a “For Sale” in the front lawn, with a “Sold” plaque hanging from the bottom. The two-story Braeburn Drive home is surrounded by empty lots and other mansions under construction. It has a semi-circular driveway in the front, a large deck in the back and newly planted landscaping. A spruce shrub by the front door still bears the price tag.
Whatever drove him, Herndon’s behavior and that of his patients attracted attention.
West Mifflin Giant Eagle pharmacist Ella Platek told investigators that she watched “individuals with Dr. Herndon’s prescriptions limp to the counter area, appearing to be in pain, but when told that the drug was not in stock, run out the door of the pharmacy,” the affidavit stated.
Other pharmacists questioned the strength of drugs he prescribed. Adam Rice, owner and pharmacist at Spartan Pharmacy on Brownsville Road, told investigators “that he had experience with the treatment of terminal cancer patients with end-stage bone cancer. He said that those patients were not prescribed the type and amount of pain medication being prescribed by Dr. Herndon on a regular basis.”
When agents visited Troy Pharmacy in Troy Hill, they found a sign on the front door reading: “We will no longer be filling prescribed medication ordered by Dr. Oliver Herndon until further notice! Sorry for the inconvenience!”
Evicted from office
At his Pleasant Hills office, patients often fought and left trash in the waiting room. Some vomited, and on one occasion, a patient urinated on the wall, Herndon’s employee said.
Pleasant Hills police responded to five calls for unruly patients at that office on Lewis Run Road between May 2011 and January, Chief Ed Cunningham said.
Complaints mounted until the building owner, Dr. Philip P. Ripepi, evicted Herndon, his one-time friend and travel companion.
“I did what I had to do,” said Ripepi, who declined further comment.
On Feb. 6, about a week after Herndon moved into an office on Waterdam Plaza Drive in Peters, a masked man entered and held an employee at gunpoint. Police made no arrest, Peters police Capt. Mike Yanchak said.
In January, federal agents arrested Carol Combs, 54, of McKees Rocks on drug charges. She told investigators that every adult member of her family visited Herndon to get prescriptions, and that she sold 700 oxycodone pills and 120 opana pills per month for more than a year. She got nearly every pill from Herndon, she said.
‘Just a normal guy’
A federal grand jury on Tuesday indicted Combs on one count of drug conspiracy and five counts of distributing oxycodone and oxymorphone.
Despite the doctor’s brazen behavior, not everyone saw this coming.
Dr. Brandon Koretz, a UCLA Health System doctor who did his residency with Herndon, described him as “just a normal guy.”
“The fact that he’s now into big-game hunting and the over-prescribing of drugs – it’s not something I’d have imagined,” he said.
Longtime patient Samuel Distefano said he respected Herndon and admired his professionalism. He sent Herndon a Facebook message offering support, he said.
“I don’t know if what the police are saying is true or not,” he said. “I just know I lost a doctor that was helping me.”
U.S. District Judge Arthur Schwab will sentence Herndon on Sept. 24. Under a plea deal, he could receive a prison sentence of 11 years and 3 months. He remains free on $50,000 bond. (LINK) — 5/26/2012
Peters Township doctor who overprescribed painkiller drugs sent straight to prison
DEA raided Oliver Herndon’s medical office at Waterdam Plaza
PITTSBURGH — A Pittsburgh-area doctor who supplied patients with so many illegal painkillers that his arrest caused the street price of the pills to double in some locations earlier this year was sentenced Monday to more than 11 years in federal prison.
Oliver Herndon, 40, of McMurray, must also repay $700,000 to two health insurance companies which paid for most of the drugs - $490,000 to UPMC for You and $210,000 to Gateway Health Plan. He was immediately ordered to begin serving his 11-year, three-month sentence by U.S. District Judge Arthur Schwab.
Herndon pleaded guilty in May to a charge of intentionally prescribing controlled substances - mostly the painkillers oxycodone and oxymorphone - without a legitimate medical purpose and with health care fraud and agreed to the sentence imposed. Schwab was not bound by that agreement, but accepted it as fair.
“My actions since last year were wrong and I accept responsibility for my actions,” Herndon, a married father of five, told the judge, calling his actions a “mistake.”
“With all due respect, sir, it wasn’t a mistake, it was a criminal act, many criminal acts over a period of time affecting many people’s lives,” Schwab said.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Kaufman said the investigation began last fall when 26 Pittsburgh-area pharmacies contacted federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents with concerns about unusually large prescriptions for narcotic painkillers from Herndon.
The DEA raided Herndon’s palliative care practice in the upscale suburb of Peters Township in February, and revoked his federal license to issue narcotic prescriptions after visiting another 128 area pharmacies only to find 87 others had stopped filling Herndon’s prescriptions, too. One even posted a sign on the door alerting customers to its ban.
Herndon’s prescriptions flooded the streets with so many pills that the street price for a single oxycodone tablet jumped to $40, from $20 or $30 each, depending upon the location, after he was arrested, Kaufman said.
Herndon said in court that he’s lost his medical license, too, though computer records with the Pennsylvania Department of State show it remains active through the end of a year. A spokeswoman for the federal prosecutor’s office said Herndon must be assuming he’ll lose his license now that his court case is officially adjudicated.
In any event, Herndon told the judge he hopes to regain his license and care for “underserved populations” including poorer people or prisoners once he finishes his prison term.
“I’d like to have the opportunity to care for people again, this time from a selfless perspective,” Herndon told the judge, who had remarked that Herndon’s motives in filling the prescriptions was “purely financial.”
Kaufman told the judge that the “harsh” sentence was necessary because of the growing problem of prescription drug abuse.
“Prescription drug abuse is now eclipsing heroin and cocaine abuse as the major narcotics addiction in the country,” Kaufman said. “Physicians are our gatekeepers” to prescription drugs and the sentence “recognizes the substantial harm that Dr. Herndon has caused through his actions.” (LINK) — 9/24/2012
Trouble Piles Up for Convicted Hospice Doctor
A hospice medical director who overprescribed narcotics to undeserving patients now faces a stack of lawsuits from grieving families while his insurer denies liability.
Donna Groomes led the charge against Dr. Oliver Herndon in a January 2013complaint for fraud and wrongful death. The lawsuit notes that Herndon is serving 11 years in federal prison, having pleaded guilty in the face of charges that he prescribed narcotics “outside the usual course of professional practice and not for a legitimate medical purpose.”
Though hospice care is specifically intended for terminal patients with six months or less left to live, Groomes said testing on her husband, Tony, after 32 months in the Dr. Herndon’s care, showed that he did not have any terminal illnesses.
Herndon had allegedly been treating Tony Groomes for end-stage congestive heart failure from 2005 to 2010 at Horizons Hospice, but discharged the man when his Medicaid ran out.
Though Tony Groomes left hospice care with no trace of heart failure, he had developed a “severe and disabling drug dependency from which he did not and could not recover,” according to the complaint in the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas.
Herndon and Horizons “overprescribed in inordinate and unusual combinations of narcotics and other agents for Mr. Groomes,” according to the complaint. “Defendant improperly increased dosages of Mr. Groomes pain medications and other controlled substances in inordinate amounts without justification.”
United National Specialty Insurance Co. sued Herndon, Horizons and Groomes for an injunction last week in the same court.
“Under the terms, provisions, definitions, exclusions, conditions and limitations of the United National policies, United National has no duty to indemnify Dr. Herndon or Horizons in connection with the Groomes suit,” the complaint states.
“As set forth above, there is no possibility of coverage under the United National policies for the claims asserted in the Groomes suit and, thus, United National has no duty to indemnify Dr. Herndon or Horizons for any of the claims asserted in the Groomes suit.
"Accordingly, United National is entitled to a declaration that it has no duty to indemnify Dr. Herndon or Horizons in connection with the Groomes suit.”
United National says Herndon convictions are tied to his unlawful distribution of “oxycodone and … oxymorphone, Schedule II controlled substances.”
The Drug Enforcement Administration caught Herndon during its 2011 investigation into tips from multiple Pittsburgh-area pharmacies regarding a high-volume of pain killer prescriptions.
In addition to the 135-month sentence, Herndon was also sentenced to repay $700,000 to UPMC for You and Gateway Health, the insurance companies that paid out the most for his prescriptions written for painkillers oxycodone and oxymorphone.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Kaufman had said “Herndon’s prescriptions flooded the streets with so many pills that the street price for a single oxycodone tablet jumped to $40, from $20 or $30 each, depending on the location, after his arrest,” Pittsburgh’s WTAE reported.
United National cites various news reports in its complaint, seeking to prove Herndon and the hospice are not eligible for coverage because of exclusions for criminal acts or injury arising from prescribing drugs.
In addition to the Groomes lawsuit, Herndon has also been named as a defendant in two other complaints by families of deceased former patients.
In one filed last month, the parents of 23-year-old Ira Gray Jr. said Herndon “negligently and recklessly prescribed [their son] … unnecessary and/or dangerous amounts of oxycodone and other medications.”
Gray was found in cardiac arrest six months into treatment with Herndon.
Janice Holan and her three daughters filed similar allegations on the same day as United’s action last week. Their action also names as defendants Donna Walters, R.N., and Hotizons Hospice CEO John Rezk.
While dyspnea, a shortness of breath linked to his end-stage pulmonary disease, had ravaged Robert Holan, Herndon and Horizons Hospice failed to provide him with a standard emergency care kit that would ease his pain, the family says.
Herndon had allegedly told the nurse on duty “not to bother him with emergency calls,” but the nurse was “very upset” for Holan’s condition, according to the complaint.
Unable to reach a doctor who could get Holan a kit, “the nurse then left Robert Holan, who was choking, coughing and aspirating, stating, ‘I’m so sorry, I can’t do anything,’” the family claims.
Robert Holan died the next day.
The hospice then allegedly cited “short staffing” in refusing to offer the Holans bereavement counseling. They also failed to provide post-mortem care, and left a Foley catheter “sticking out of Decedent’s penis with bag and tubing left on the floor,” which Holan’s wife discovered during a post-mortem bath, according to the complaint.
Three weeks after his death, the hospice altered medical records to indicate that the family and Holan had refused a care kit, according to the complaint.
The Groomes, Gray and Holan complaints all make various claims seeking damages against Herdon for professional negligence, survival and wrongful death. The Groomes and Holan actions also make additional claims including fraud and infliction of emotional distress. (LINK) — 6/25/2013
Peters doctor jailed for illegal prescriptions pleads guilty in second case
The former medical director of a Monroeville hospice Monday said he sent patients to the center who weren’t terminally ill and kept them there so he could rip off Medicare with false billings.
Oliver Herndon, 43, a former Peters doctor who was medical director for Horizons Hospice, waived indictment and pleaded guilty to health care fraud before U.S. District Judge Arthur Schwab.
Herndon, who already is serving more than 11 years for illegally prescribing thousands of painkiller tablets as one of Western Pennsylvania’s most prolific pill mill doctors, cost Medicare and Medicaid between $200,000 and $400,000.
He conspired with others in the scheme, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Cessar, although no one else has been charged.
Herndon said that between 2008 and 2012, he and others placed patients in hospice care who were not terminal and then submitted false insurance claims for that care.
He also kept patients in hospice beyond the normal six-month stay so he could continue to bill for their care, according to Mr. Cessar.
The U.S. attorney’s office had filed a direct charge against him last month as part of an ongoing investigation involving Horizons Hospice. The company has offices in Altoona and Harrisburg and on Mosside Boulevard in Monroeville, where Herndon was in charge of care.
A Stanford University medical school graduate who had been an internist certified in palliative medicine, Herndon is now just another federal inmate.
He appeared in court in an orange jail jumpsuit and acknowledged to the judge that he submitted the false bills for patients who shouldn’t have been in his care.
It was the second time he admitted guilt in a federal courtroom.
In 2012, he pleaded guilty to prescribing more than 10,000 oxycodone pills and some 3,600 oxymorphone tablets to patients who didn’t need them following an investigation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. (LINK) — 11/03/2014
Former hospice doctor sentenced in Medicare scheme
The former medical director of a Monroeville hospice already serving more than 11 years in federal prison for illegally prescribing thousands of painkillers was sentenced again Tuesday for sending patients to the hospice who weren’t terminally ill in a scheme to rip off Medicare with bogus billings.
U.S. District Judge Arthur Schwab sentenced Oliver Herndon, 43, of Peters to 33 months on the new charges but said the sentence will be served at the same time as the earlier one. The judge also ordered him to pay about $312,000 in restitution to the government.
Herndon, the former medical director for Horizons Hospice, waived indictment and pleaded guilty in November, which often indicates someone is cooperating with the government.
The U.S. Attorney’s office won’t comment, but Mary Ann Stewart, the former chief operating officer at Horizons, was charged in February with fraud and lying to a federal grand jury in connection with the scheme.
Prosecutors said that between 2008 and 2012, hospice officials placed patients in care who were not terminal and then submitted false insurance claims for that care. Herndon also kept patients in hospice for longer than the normal six-month period so he could keep billing, the U.S. Attorney’s office said.
Before he was charged in the hospice investigation, Herndon was the region’s most prolific pill mill doctor, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Although he pleaded guilty in 2012 to prescribing about 14,000 oxycodone and oxymorphone pills to people who had no need for them, DEA said the true number of pills he prescribed was in the hundreds of thousands.
When he was arrested in March 2012, agents said the supply of painkillers in the area was cut so drastically that the price per pill doubled. (LINK) — 7/14/2015
NORTH CAROLINA MEDICAL BOARD RECORD—36206 LICENSE STATUS/DISCIPLINARY ACTIONS—License inactive; Voluntary Surrender of license.
Past documents show Kessel has sat on both sides of courtroom
HICKORY, N.C. – A probable cause hearing scheduled Wednesday in the felony drug trafficking case of Hickory family practitioner John Kessel was continued to a later date, according to court documents.
He was charged with felony trafficking opium or heroin after agents stopped him as he pulled out of a Krispy Kreme parking lot as the result of an investigation conducted by the Catawba County Sheriff’s Office, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and State Bureau of Investigation. He was found with 240 Oxycodone pills, according to the Catawba County Sheriff’s Office.
A review of cases Kessel has been involved in shows he was the plaintiff in a child custody case from two decades ago that garnered national interest. He was also on the receiving end of a lawsuit in 2007 that claimed he created a hostile work environment for a female employee.
Kessel was awarded $7.85 million in restitution after a woman who was once his fiancée, Anne G. Conaty, put the couple’s child up for adoption in 1991 despite Kessel’s attempt to gain custody of the child, according to a verdict from Justice Robin Davis in the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia.
“The case is the first in which an unwed father who never had custody of the child was awarded monetary damages as a result of the mother placing the child for adoption without his consent,” Conaty’s lawyer, Lonnie Simmons, told The Associated Press in a 1995 report.
As a paternity request Kessel filed in the Circuit Court of Cabell County (W.Va.) was being heard, Conaty traveled to Minnesota, and then California, where she put the child up for adoption, a court document said. The child was born July 24 in Los Angeles and traveled with its new parents to Canada two days later, a court document said.
Kessel did not learn about the birth until after the child’s adoption, a court document said. His father and he filed a lawsuit against Anne G. Conaty, her brother, Brian Conaty, her parents Thomas and Eleanor Conaty and California adoption attorney David Leavit that, “asserted claims … for fraud, civil conspiracy, tortious interference with parental relationship, outrage, violation of constitutional rights, and tortious interference with and deprivation of grandparental relationship,” the court document said.
“Following a trial in November 1995, the jury, on December 4, 1995, returned a verdict against the defendants on the issues of fraud and tortious interference.”
Kessel and his father were awarded $2 million in compensatory damages and $5.85 million in punitive damages, the court document said. The defendants’ appeal went to the Supreme Court of Appeals in West Virginia, where Davis ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, upholding the unprecedented legal verdict.
Eleven years after Kessel received restitution, he found himself in the midst of another lawsuit – this time as the defendant.
One of his former employees at Fairbrook Medical Clinic, Deborah Waechter, filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2006, which in turn sued Kessel for allegedly creating a hostile work environment for Waechter based on her gender, according to the lawsuit.
Waechter, who started working at Fairbrook Medical Clinic in December 2002, cited what she claimed were Kessel’s actions that led to her complaint, the lawsuit said.
“The incident took place in January of 2003, when Kessel showed Waechter an x-ray of his hip,” Waechter alleged in the lawsuit. “He pointed to a faint image of his penis and referred to it as ‘Mr. Happy.’ He showed this x-ray 20-30 times to other people in the clinic. On five of these occasions, he referred to the image as ‘Mr. Happy.’”
Waechter also claimed Kessel would make remarks about his sex life, the lawsuit said. Two months after the January incident, Waechter said Kessel told her a male patient made comments about her chest and asked her to wear clothing “that was not so revealing,” the lawsuit said.
She alleged Kessel showed her pictures from a vacation on the Caribbean that “depicted Kessel, his wife, and other couples scantily clad on the beach,” the lawsuit said.
A number of incidents followed in 2005.
While Waechter was on a family vacation in Washington D.C., she said Kessel told one of her patients, “’she was screwing around’ so that she could have another baby,” the lawsuit said. He told the patient they could follow up with her, “when she returns from screwing,” the lawsuit said. Kessel denied making the statement, the lawsuit said.
Another doctor at Fairbrook Medical Clinic, Joseph Sigmon, testified in the case. He said, “Kessel would always tell dirty, sexual jokes to men and women alike,” the lawsuit said. The lawsuit also states Waechter made, “an off-color remark about her chest on one occasion.”
When Waechter was pregnant with her second child in October 2005, she said he would comment, “on how big her chest was getting and how fat she was,” the lawsuit said. “When Waechter returned from maternity leave, Kessel frequently commented on her breast size and even asked her if he could help pump them while she was nursing,” she claimed in the lawsuit.
The lawsuit said the final incident before Waechter resigned occurred in February 2006. She and a hospital that loaned her money for relocation when she took the job had a legal dispute, the lawsuit said. Kessel covered the cost of her legal fees, the lawsuit said. Then, she claimed he said, “You owe me big for helping you with the Frye thing. Are you going to let me help you pump (your breast)?”
Waechter said in the lawsuit she made several complaints, but none were investigated.
The two parties settled the lawsuit in April 2011. Kessel paid Waechter $25,000 and was ordered to revise Fairbrook Medical Clinic’s anti-discrimination policy in addition to a number of other terms agreed to by the two sides.
Three years later, Kessel is in the courtroom again. He surrendered his license certified by the North Carolina Medical Board following his first appearance. He has been charged with a Class E felony, and if convicted, Judge Mark L. Killian told him at his first appearance he could face up to 88 months in prison. (LINK) — 11/19/2014
MEDICAL BOARD RECORD—MD6091 LICENSE STATUS/DISCIPLINARY ACTIONS—LIcense Suspended; Consent Order
Doctor Charged with Overprescribing Drugs
Richmond, Virginia—Dante Gates lay on his back in a government office building writhing in pain from an old injury while the doctor who once comforted him with massive drug doses fought to keep his medical license.
Gates said the huge doses of narcotics Dr. William E. Hurwitz gave patients who suffer unbearable pain made life tolerable.
Critics, however, accuse him of killing two patients with such high doses in a complaint to the Virginia Board of Medicine, which opened hearings Thursday to decide whether to forever suspend Hurwitz’s license.
The complaint against Hurwitz also alleges that 28 other patients of his are receiving “excessive” doses of painkillers.
Hurwitz, whose Washington, D.c., practice deals with patients from across the nation whose pain-control therapies have failed them, had his Virginia license temporarily suspended May 14.
“I think I’ll be vindicated,” said Hurwitz.
Gates had visited Hurwitz for two years, but claims he has lived in agony in the more than two weeks since the drugs Hurwitz prescribed for him played out. The 41-year-old former Virginia Department of Transportation worker, who broke his neck and imploded two vertebrae in his upper pack [sic] in a work accident in 1974, spoke Thursday between gasps caused by his pain.
“I got life, I was able to live some type of what you could call a normal life,” Gates said. “If I stay like this, I’ll wonder each day if it’s worth going on.”
Stephen Bresko got death, claimed his sister, Laura Bresko, who filed on of the complaints against Hurwitz. She alleges the drugs Hurwitz prescribed killed her 36-year-old brother in January in Pigeon Forge, Tenn. Stephen Bresko suffered chronic pain from a 1986 car accident and a 1991 mugging, his sister said.
“It appears something could have been done in my brother’s situation other than killing him,” Ms Bresko said. “My brother seems to be the first corpse to come forward.”
The second patient mentioned by the state was a Florida woman who died Jan. 22, in Columbia, Md., of narcotic intoxication. She was not identified by name.
“Dr. Hurwitz has fallen below accepted standards…for treatment of patients with chronic pain,” Assistant Attorney General Richard Rizk said in his opening arguments. “He has departed from national guidelines at every step of the way.”
Hurwitz’s attorney, James R. Tate, said Stephen Bresko was killed by a drug addiction he concealed from Hurwitz. Tate said the Florida woman, who had been seeing Hurwitz for about a week, committed suicide by taking doses 10 to 20 times larger than Hurwitz suggested.
Tate said Hurwitz has seen more than 250 patients in the last four years, and most of them have responded well to his therapy.
Dr. James N. Campbell, professor of neurosurgery and director of the Blaustein Pain Treatment Center at Johns Hopkins University, also defended Hurwitz’s policy of allowing patients to determine their own dosages, taking drug requests over the phone and only seeing patients every few months. Campbell testified as an expert witness on Hurwitz’s behalf.
He said that the many patients find it very difficult to get their local doctors to prescribe large doses of drugs, so they turn to a few physicians like Hurwitz who specialize in pain.
“I think he’s pushing the envelope but he’s doing it responsibly,” said Campbell. (LINK) — 6/21/1996
Dr. Hurwitz convicted on most counts.
After the jury announced the verdict of conviction on some 50 counts, primarily of conspiracy, the prosecutor demanded that Dr. William Hurwitz be shackled and taken off to prison immediately, perhaps for the rest of his life. The Judge acquiesced and revoked the $2 million bail. Dr. Hurwitz removed his tie, emptied the change from his pockets, and was hauled away by federal marshals.
The jury acquitted Dr. Hurwitz on nine counts and continues to deliberate on the final three.
“This sends a major message to anyone who would use the treatment of pain as a cover for being a drug trafficker,” said U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty.
“Any doctor encountering a patient in pain will now run for the hills,” said Siobhan Reynolds, president of the Pain Relief Network. She called Dr. Hurwitz a “hero and a medical pioneer.”
“The American people are suffering because law enforcement is taking over the practice of medicine,” said Marvin Miller, one of the attorneys representing Dr. Hurwitz (Washington Post 12/16/04).
The most frightening aspect, stated AAPS Public Affairs Counsel Kathryn Serkes after hearing closing arguments and the verdict, is that “being suspicious of a patient equals knowledge equals participation in a conspiracy.”
A number of patients, who had once begged Dr. Hurwitz for pain relief, testified against him in return for a reduction in their own sentences for trafficking. (LINK) — 12/16/2004
DEA Administrator Karen Tandy’s Remarks on Dr. William Hurwitz Sentencing
Justice was served today. A criminal drug dealer who violated the public trust and his Hippocratic oath ‘to do no harm’ will no longer be in a position to place our citizens in harm’s way.
Abuse of prescription drugs now rivals all other drug abuse except marijuana-almost one out of every ten high school seniors has abused prescription drugs.
Prescription drug abuse can have lethal consequences, as today’s case demonstrates. DEA’s job is to end that abuse by targeting the diversion of legal drugs into the illegal market. Drugs are diverted a number of ways-through pharmacy robberies, prescription forgeries, and fraudulent Internet sales. Doctors are an extremely small part of the problem. Last year, cases in which DEA was involved resulted in the arrest of 42 doctors out of a total of almost one million registered physicians in the United States. This equates to the arrest of one physician out of every 23,000.
DEA’s enforcement strategy against doctors like Hurwitz hasn’t changed. We employ a balanced approach that recognizes both the unquestioned need for responsible pain medication, and the possibility, which today’s case graphically illustrates, of criminal drug trafficking.
Dr. Hurwitz prescribed 1,600 pills to one person to take in a single day. This is what 1,600 pills looks like.
Dr. Hurwitz was no different from a cocaine or heroin dealer peddling poison on the street corner. Indeed he was worse, because unlike the street dealer, he had and abused the trust and authority to treat people in pain. He hid behind his white lab coat and Stanford medical degree to try to conceal the fact that he had become a common drug trafficker.
Four months ago, the citizens of Virginia saw Dr. Hurwitz for what he was and convicted him on 50 counts of drug trafficking, finding him responsible for Linda Lalmond’s (lull-mond ) tragic overdose death and the serious injuries of two other patients. Today, with his sentence to 25 years in federal prison, the citizens of Virginia – and the United States – are safer.
To the million doctors who legitimately prescribe narcotics to relieve patients’ pain and suffering, you have nothing to fear from Dr. Hurwitz’s prosecution and no reason to refrain from providing your patients with pain medications when you deem it medically necessary. When you examine the facts of this case, it will be immediately apparent that nothing you do in your practice even faintly resembles what Dr. Hurwitz did.
The case against Dr. Hurwitz was a key part of an Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force investigation that resulted in more than 50 convictions, pleas, or commitment to guilty pleas for drug trafficking. Many of those involved received drugs from Dr. Hurwitz.
Ridding the medical profession of criminal drug dealers like Hurwitz ensures that the medical community will continue to enjoy the public confidence that the overwhelming majority of its practitioners have earned. (LINK) — 4/14/2005
Pain doctor’s conviction overturned
Because U.S. District Judge William Wexler improperly told jurors they could not consider whether Dr. William Hurwitz acted in good faith when he prescribed large doses of opioids, his conviction for violating federal drug laws has been vacated by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and remanded for retrial.
“We cannot say that no reasonable juror could have concluded that Hurwitz’s conduct fell within an objectively-defined good faith standard,” wrote the three-judge Circuit Court panel. Hurwitz, the judges noted, had presented evidence that he ran a legitimate medical practice and believed that his prescriptions were “medically proper.”
Prosecutors “overreached in this case and tried to exert federal control over the practice of medicine,” stated Marvin Miller, Hurwitz’s trial attorney.
“It’s about time that courts start to realize that these are doctors, not drug dealers,” stated AAPS Public Affairs Counsel Kathryn Serkes. The Hurwitz case is perhaps the most prominent of many federal prosecutions targeting physicians whose patients divert or abuse their prescribed pain medications (Washington Post8/23/06).
The most dangerous aspect of this case, Serkes noted, is that the government used Hurwitz’s good-faith efforts to treat his patients and inquire whether they might be diverting as evidence of participation in a conspiracy to distribute drugs.
The Fourth Circuit’s decision was “a stunning defeat for the federal prosecutors, who vowed to go after pain doctors as though they were the Taliban,” stated AAPS General Counsel Andrew Schlafly, who authored the AAPS amicus brief supporting Hurwitz’s appeal. “The arrest, trial, and sentencing of Dr. Hurwitz reflected numerous abuses and distortions by the government.” He described the sentence of 25 years, the equivalent of life imprisonment, as “shocking.”
The government initially objected to the filing of the AAPS amicus brief, in which Point I is the argument unanimously accepted by the Circuit judges. (LINK) — 8/24/2006
Prominent Pain Specialist, Dr. William Hurwitz, to Begin Re-Trial in Virginia Federal Court for Prescribing Pain Medication
After Unanimous Reversal in Court of Appeals, Government Seeks Again to Convict Dr. Hurwitz as Major Drug Dealer Even Though He Never Profited from Prescriptions. DPA Calls Government Prosecution of Pain Physician Harmful; Likely to Dissuade Doctors from Providing Effective Pain Management Care
On Monday, Dr. William Hurwitz will begin a second trial on 50 counts of unlawful prescribing of opioid pain medication as prosecutors seek to hold him responsible for the misdeeds of a small number of his patients, some of whom secretly sold or misused the pills they were prescribed. The government is charging Dr. Hurwitz as a drug kingpin, though it has never claimed that Dr. Hurwitz made a dime from these sales. In August of last year, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously reversed Dr. Hurwitz’s first conviction and 25-year sentence because the trial judge had barred him from showing in the 2004 trial that he had prescribed the medicines in good faith to provide what he believed was the best medical care of his patients.
This case is being watched closely by both doctors and patients who must deal with issues surrounding pain medication on a regular basis. The government’s prosecution of Dr. Hurwitz occurs in the context of a nationwide law enforcement campaign against the use of powerful analgesics to treat patients suffering from severe chronic pain. Scores of resulting physician convictions has seriously chilled the willingness of many physicians to provide adequate treatment for their patients, for fear that they could end up as criminal drug defendants through no fault of their own.
“It is profoundly disturbing that federal cops and lawyers have second-guessed the medical judgment of Dr. Hurwitz and the Virginia Medical Board, which oversees his practice and chosen to treat him as a drug dealer instead of the compassionate physician who he is,” said Daniel Abrahamson, director of Legal Affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance. Abrahamson continued, “This misguided prosecution, carried out in the name of the federal war on drugs, has already ruined one pain expert’s career, and will erect even steeper barriers for millions of Americans who suffer from untreated or under-treated pain from finding effective relief at the hands of skilled and compassionate doctors. State medical boards, not police and prosecutors, should regulate medical practice.”
Dr. Hurwitz’s defense is backed by a large and prestigious coalition of leading health institutions and practitioners including the American Academy of Pain Medicine, the American Pain Foundation, the National Pain Foundation, the National Foundation for the Treatment of Pain, and the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons.
In September 2005, the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) filed an amicus curiae (friend-of-the-court) brief in Dr. Hurwitz’s appeal, signed by leading pain treatment experts from across the country. The brief sought to educate the court about the difficulties faced by pain patients seeking adequate treatment. It corrected common misunderstandings about pain therapy and explained how the federal government misconstrued both federal law and accepted standards of medical practice in prosecuting Dr. Hurwitz.
Dr. Hurwitz’s legal plight is part of an eightfold increase in physician prosecutions over the past three years. An estimated 30 percent–or 50 to 75 million Americans–suffer from chronic pain on a daily basis. As such, untreated pain is considered the nation’s largest health problem and results in more lost days from work than heart disease and cancer combined.
Dr. Hurwitz is being represented pro bono by attorneys Richard Sauber, of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, and Larry Robbins, of Robbins, Russell, Englert, Orseck & Untereiner. “We have taken on Dr. Hurwitz’s defense because of our concern for the grave legal and social policy ramifications of this misguided prosecution, and because we believe Dr. Hurwitz was operating as a physician and not a drug dealer, as the government claims.” Mr. Sauber said. (LINK) — 3/23/2007
Juggling Figures, and Justice, in a Doctor’s Trial
On April 14, 2005, the day Dr. William E. Hurwitz was sentenced to 25 years in prison, Karen Tandy called a news conference to celebrate the sentence and reassure other doctors. Ms. Tandy, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, held up a plastic bag containing 1,600 opioid pills.
“Dr. Hurwitz prescribed 1,600 pills to one person to take in a single day,” she announced. This bag showed that he was “no different from a cocaine or heroin dealer peddling poison on the street corner,” she said, and made it “immediately apparent” that he was not a legitimate doctor.
“To the million doctors who legitimately prescribe narcotics to relieve patients’ pain and suffering,” Ms. Tandy said, “you have nothing to fear from Dr. Hurwitz’s prosecution.”
Next week, Ms. Tandy will have another photo opportunity, when Dr. Hurwitz is again sentenced in federal court, after the reversal of his conviction and a retrial this year. But this time, Ms. Tandy may want to skip the show-and-tell.
Counting pills is a prosecutor’s trick, not a proper gauge of medical practice, and the trick didn’t even work at the retrial.
Dr. Hurwitz was cleared of most of the charges on which he was previously convicted, including the one involving the patient who received the prescription brandished by Ms. Tandy. The defense successfully argued that the patient was not a drug dealer and that Dr. Hurwitz never intended to give him 1,600 pills a day – that number was the result of a clerical error, not a plot to sell drugs. None of the jurors I interviewed considered Dr. Hurwitz anything like a street drug dealer, and they were appalled to learn after the trial that he had already served more time in prison than some of his patients who were caught reselling the drugs.
The only lesson for doctors I can see in Ms. Tandy’s bag of pills is, “Be afraid.”
No matter what you have learned in medical school, if you are prescribing opioids in doses that seems high to narcotics agents and prosecutors, you are at risk of a trial. And once you enter the courtroom, anything can happen.
At the first trial, Dr. Hurwitz was convicted of writing prescriptions that caused bodily injury, crimes that carried a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years. At the retrial, the judge dismissed the charges for the very good reason that there was no proof the prescriptions actually caused the injuries.
At the first trial, the 1,600-pill argument carried the day with the jury. The foreman cited that number in explaining to The Washington Post why, even though he was “not an expert,” he was sure Dr. Hurwitz was not a “legitimate” doctor, because the number of pills went “beyond the bounds of reason.” In Dr. Hurwitz’s retrial, the prosecution tried the same strategy by repeatedly mentioning the 1,600 pills and other high-dosage prescriptions. The defense presented reams of expert testimony that there was no recognized upper limit on the level of opioids that should be prescribed. Some chronic-pain patients need enormous amounts because they develop a tolerance.
One of those patients was Patrick Snowden, the man who was prescribed the 1,600 pills. His mother wrote Dr. Hurwitz a letter praising him for giving her son his life back by enabling him to deal with the pain of a foot injured so badly that he had undergone nine operations and been advised to amputate it.
There was no evidence that Mr. Snowden resold any of the pills prescribed by Dr. Hurwitz, including the famous 1,600 pills. According to the defense, that scary number was a one-time fluke resulting from a clerical error when Mr. Snowden was given two new prescriptions for pills of a lower strength because his pharmacy had run out of the usual pills. The defense maintained that Dr. Hurwitz never intended Mr. Snowden to take 1,600 pills in one day and that Mr. Snowden never did take them because he realized what his proper dosage was.
The prosecution fixated on the pill counts of other patients, too, often to baffling effect, because the only thing that seemed to matter was the number of pills, not their strength. When an F.B.I. agent, Aaron Weeter, prepared an elaborate chart listing the number of pills received by Dr. Hurwitz’s patients, he was questioned about its usefulness by Larry Robbins, a defense lawyer.
“Would you agree that, standing alone, we can learn nothing very important from the pill count alone?” Mr. Robbins asked.
“I’m not qualified to answer the question,” Mr. Weeter replied.
Mr. Robbins tried working through the math with him. Wouldn’t two 40-milligram pills be no more potent than a single 80-milligram pill? But the agent stood by his pill-count charts.
After the trial, the jurors told me that the defense had persuaded them to ignore the pill counts. I suppose that this could be counted as a victory for science, but it is an isolated one, because the pill-count prosecution strategy has repeatedly worked in other cases. Richard Paey, a chronic-pain patient in Florida who uses a wheelchair, was sent to prison for drug trafficking after a prosecutor argued that he could not possibly have been taking 25 pills a day himself.
Most other doctors could not hope to do as well in court as Dr. Hurwitz, who had unusual advantages at his second trial thanks to his prominence and the outrage over his conviction. He was supported by some of the leading pain experts and received a pro bono defense from two top criminal lawyers in Washington who led a legal team with more than 20 members. Paying for a defense like his would probably cost at least $3 million, beyond the means of most doctors in drug cases, because their assets are normally seized long before trial.
Even though Dr. Hurwitz’s defense cleared him of most of the charges, the jurors still convicted him of drug trafficking in some cases because they decided that he had ignored signs that the patients were reselling the drugs. I think that the jurors wrongly interpreted the law and the facts of the case, but I can also understand why they had a hard time figuring out what constitutes legal medical practice.
They were asked to render verdicts on dozens of prescriptions given to 19 patients – the equivalent of 19 different malpractice cases involving the treatment of pain and addiction, two of the most controversial areas of medicine. The jurors did not have the time or the expertise to sort through all the complexities.
After the trial, when they learned more about the pain-medicine debate and found out that Dr. Hurwitz might still be sentenced to 10 or more years in prison, several jurors expressed regret to me. They said they hoped that he was sentenced to the two and a half years that he had already served.
Even if Dr. Hurwitz does walk free next week, I wouldn’t take much solace in his victory if I were a doctor treating pain patients. I wouldn’t feel safe until doctors’ prescribing practices are judged by state medical boards, as they were until the D.E.A. and federal prosecutors started using criminal courts to regulate medicine. The members of those state medical boards don’t always make the right judgment, but at least they know that there is more to their job than counting pills. (LINK) — 7/03/2007
A Win for Dr. Hurwitz, a Loss for the Pill-Counters
Dr. William Hurwitz was sentenced Friday to 57 months in prison for prescribing opioids. That’s more time than his supporters and some of the jurors were hoping for, but it’s still a major victory for him — and for the scientists who testified at the trial. The prosecutors had asked for a life sentence.
The sentence is a distinct reduction from the 25-year sentence Dr. Hurwitz was serving after being convicted in 2004 on drug trafficking and other charges. (The conviction was overturned and resulted in a retrial, at which he was convicted of 16 counts of drug trafficking.) One of Dr. Hurwitz’s lawyers, Richard Sauber, said that, considering the time already served, Dr. Hurwitz could be free in 17 months.
The good news, for doctors worried about the Drug Enforcement Administration’s campaign against opioids, is that U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema paid attention to the testimony of scientists instead of the 1,600-pill argument of the prosecution and Karen Tandy, the head of the D.E.A. As the Associated Press reports:
Brinkema said she had read news accounts of the first trial and had seen some of the massive prescriptions Hurwitz had given out, including one patient who was given 1,600 pills a day.
”The amount of drugs Dr. Hurwitz prescribed struck me as absolutely crazy,” the judge said.
But after hearing testimony from both sides, ”I totally turned around on that issue,” Brinkema said. ”The mere prescription of huge quantities of opioids doesn’t mean anything.”
The bad news for other pain-management doctors is that they can’t count on getting such a thoughtful judge, or getting the support of experts and lawyers like the ones who defended Dr. Hurwitz. And, of course, despite all the relative advantages he had over other doctors, Dr. Hurwitz still received a 57-month sentence.
While there was no evidence that Dr. Hurwitz was profiting from the resale of his prescriptions — and the jurors I interviewed said they didn’t think he intended the drugs to be resold — he will still spend more time in prison than almost all the patients who admitting lying to him and reselling the drugs. Thanks to the deals they made to cooperate with prosecutors, seven of the nine patients got sentences ranging from 10 to 39 months. Only two got longer sentences than 57 months — and one of them, who got 72 months, was also guilty of armed robbery and arson.
I’ll leave you with a few questions:
Why should a doctor trying to treating patients in pain serve more time in prison than a patient who dupes him and intentionally violates the law by reselling the drugs?
Will Judge Brinkema’s words and action today discourage narcotics agents and prosecutors from targeting doctors who prescribe large quantities of opioids?
Will the D.E.A.’s policies change now that Democrats control Congress? At a hearing this week on the hearing on the D.E.A.’s regulation of medicine, Karen Tandy and other D.E.A. officials got an unusually tough grilling from members of House Judiciary Committee like Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York. The legislators asked awkward questions about the D.E.A.’s obstruction of research into medical marijuana and its policies on opioids. They invited testimony from John Flannery, a lawyer who’s been defending chronic-pain doctors and the author of “Pain in America.” They heard Siobhan Reynolds, the president of the Pain Relief Network, testify that the D.E.A. is an out-of-control agency “that has demonstrated no respect for the rights of ill Americans, nor for the rule of law itself.”
It may seem naive to expect any major change in the D.E.A.’s bureaucratic imperatives. But let the record show one shift by its chief: Today, unlike the day when Dr. Hurwitz was sentenced to 25 years in prison, Karen Tandy did not celebrate by posing for pictures with a bag of 1,600 pills.
UPDATE: I just heard from one of the three jurors in the Hurwitz trial whom I previously interviewed. She spoke with the other two and said they share the following reaction: “As we had previously said, we hoped for a light sentence and had complete confidence in Judge Brinkema. We are pleased with the outcome.” (LINK) — 7/13/2007
MICHIGAN MEDICAL BOARD RECORD—4301063677 LICENSE STATUS/DISCIPLINARY ACTIONS—License suspended; see medical board actions at the bottom of this blog post.
Advisory regarding Dr. Joseph Oesterling’s resignation
“In a letter sent to President Bollinger, Medical School Interim Dean Lorris Betz stated: ‘The conclusion I have reached is that Dr. Oesterling’s conduct is so egregious and inconsistent with standards expected of faculty of the University of Michigan that termination proceedings must be implemented against him.’ That letter, which also was sent to the Chair of the Faculty Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs, was required to start the final stage of the process that could lead to dismissal of Oesterling as a faculty member.
"In his letter, Dean Betz identified charges against Oesterling in four areas: (1) unapproved and excessive, outside employment in violation of written University and Medical School requirements; (2) undisclosed conflicts of interest resulting from dealings with pharmaceutical companies and other non-University entities; (3) personal profits derived from University resources or efforts; and (4) multiple billing of expenses and falsification of related records.
"Lisa Baker, Associate Vice President for University Relations, stated that the Medical School has cooperated with the Department of Public Safety’s criminal investigation. ‘The criminal proceedings appear to be nearing a conclusion, and the University must now act. The evidence uncovered to date strongly indicates that Dr. Oesterling has engaged in a pattern of misconduct that the University simply will not tolerate,’ Baker stated. The University also is considering separate legal action to recover amounts it believes is owed to it by Dr. Oesterling.
"Dr. Lazar J. Greenfield, Professor of Surgery and Chair of the University’s Department of Surgery, provided assurance that the Section of Urology will continue to provide the very highest level of care to its patients. Dr. Greenfield stated that the investigation of Dr. Oesterling’s conduct had not revealed that patient care had been compromised. Dr. James E. Montie, Professor of Surgery, continues as Interim Head of the Department’s Section of Urology.
"As requested, the University has forwarded copies of its investigation materials to the Michigan Department of Consumer & Industry Services, which has responsibility for considering disciplinary action with respect to Dr. Oesterling’s medical license.” (LINK) — 7/15/1997
Top Urologist Loses Job For Taking Nilandron Payola
Dr. Joseph Oesterling, editor-in-chief of the journal Urology, was found guilty last July of taking money under false pretenses (a felony). Dr. Oesterling’s medical license was suspended for a brief time (one week). Sentenced to community service, he was ordered to repay the University of Michigan over a hundred thousand dollars. He resigned from his job as head of Urology at the University’s medical school and director of the Michigan Prostate Institute. His university web site has been shut down. Is this a tragedy or a fender-bender on the prostate cancer pike?
Dr. Oesterling, aged 41, has a sterling reputation as a surgeon. He’s known as one of the leading artists (after Patrick Walsh) in nerve-sparing radical prostatectomy. He says he’s continuing his research projects and wants to put these troubles behind him. Friends and admirers in the prostate cancer community praise him as a man who spends hours of personal time answering calls from patients far and wide, trying to help them through the maze of treatment decisions.
Dr. Oesterling failed to protect himself and the interests of cancer patients. He took what a judge viewed as kickbacks from drug companies - money and position in return for endorsing the prostate cancer drug Nilandron and a procedure called the TUNA. Hoechst Marion Roussel, which makes Nilandron, was found to have given Oesterling a check for $25,000. VidaMed, which owns TUNA, gave him a seat on their board.
No consolation to Dr. Oesterling or his patients, but there’s a touch of screwball comedy to this story.Things went haywire when a temporary secretary opened an envelope containing a $5,000 check. Along with the cheque came a letter mentioning a larger contribution to The National Prostate Research Foundation. No one had heard of such a Foundation.
Dr. Oesterling’s generosity toward patients makes it sadder that he let drug companies bribe him. While earning close to $400,000 a year, he accepted extra money from companies whose products he was testing in clinical trials. And Hoechst Marion Roussel paid for 60,000 copies of his book. Reportedly, the Beyer company has distributed the book to branches of the prostate cancer support group Man to Man. Dr. Oesterling was put once through a white-collar wringer. He was sentenced to120 hours of folding laundry and chatting to men in a homeless shelter. Perhaps he did a world of good there. Who knows, maybe he persuaded dozens of men to check their PSA’s. (If they could afford the test).
“Prescription for Trouble”
How the drug companies brought about this urologist’s fall has only lately reached the oncology press. Patricia Anstett of the Detroit Free Press covered the story. When Dr. Oesterling was sentenced, Anstett filed a report (datelined August 19, 1997): Prescription for trouble: U-M case reveals how much money flows from drug companies to doctors. Anstett looks at how the $55 billion a year drug business spends more than $10 billion a year on doctor-related “freebies” and advertising in medical journals.
Pointless to pretend freebies carry no influence. Within days of receiving $25,000 from the makers of Nilandron, Dr Oesterling wrote to 2 Ann Arbor hospital pharmacies urging them to favor Nilandron over competing prostate cancer drugs.
The system of freebies has already taken hold in the prostate cancer advocacy movement. Some drug companies are interested in “helping” prostate cancer advocacy. Not all of this help seems purely altruistic. The companies have an interest in influencing how people with cancer run their own organizations. Dr. Oesterling’s story may help remind us to be aware of this. (LINK) — 1/08/1998
Nine Misconduct Charges Filed Against Former U-M Urology Chief
Dr. Joseph Oesterling , a once-leading urologist who resigned in disgrace in 1997 from a top job at the University of Michigan over expense-account abuses, faces new professional misconduct charges.
Oesterling, 49, will have a July 12 compliance conference with the state Board of Medicine to try to negotiate a settlement over four counts of negligence, four counts of incompetence and one count of lack of good moral character.
The Michigan Attorney General’s Office filed the charges with the Michigan Department of Community Health, the administrative arm of the state Board of Medicine.
In the charges, Oesterling is accused of failing to properly treat urological problems in four patients – identified only by their initials – at St. Mary’s Medical Center in Saginaw, where he is on staff.
Oesterling allegedly mishandled urological conditions in two men, causing each to lose a kidney, according to the complaint. In the other cases, Oesterling is accused of damaging bladder and reproductive organs in two women during surgery.
Possible penalties range from probation to suspension or revocation of his license. If a settlement can’t be reached, a public hearing will be scheduled at which patients might testify, said Ray Garza, Freedom of Information Act officer with Michigan’s Bureau of Health Professions.
Oesterling’s attorney, Michael Schwartz, denied the charges and said the doctor will not comment on the cases.
Jill Goodell, hospital spokeswoman, said Oesterling’s status at St. Mary’s is part of a peer review process and is confidential.
Throughout June, Oesterling has been on and off the members list of the medical staff on the hospital’s Web site, www.saintmarys-saginaw.org.
Oesterling was not on the list Monday.
Oesterling rose to the top of his profession by age 38, when he was named chair of urology at the University of Michigan Medical Center in 1994.
He also was the top editor of Urology, a leading journal in the field.
But in 1997, he resigned from U-M after pleading guilty to a felony of expense -account fraud in a case that gained international attention as an example of physician conflict-of-interest issues.
Oesterling was sentenced by Washtenaw County Circuit Judge Melinda Morris to a year s of probation and community service, his medical license was suspended, and he was placed on two year s of probation by the state Board of Medicine.
A U-M investigation showed Oesterling accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from more than a dozen companies; that he failed to report that income to U-M , and that he double- and triple-billed the university, urology groups and the companies for expenses.
He said at the time that he put the money into several for-profit and nonprofit companies he established for prostate cancer research.
But a 1997 Free Press investigation found that Oesterling put some of the money into his personal banking account and that there was no accountability to establish that the rest of the money went to prostate cancer activities.
Oesterling reimbursed U-M for $105,000 after his conviction.
The following year, t he American Board of Urology revoked his board certification and he resigned as editor of Urology. He moved his practice to Saginaw, where he obtained hospital privileges from St. Mary’s.
In 2000, Oesterling was reprimanded by the state Board of Medicine for misrepresenting results of a study for a company, VidaMed Inc., that funded his research and in which he owned stock, according to state records.
As part of a consent agreement, the state dropped charges that he lied to eight prostate cancer patients about their prognoses after Oesterling agreed not to misrepresent patient prognoses anymore. He also was ordered not to conduct clinical trials for five years, engage only in supervised research for the following five years and “ play no role with respect to the financial aspects of any clinical research trials.”
Lawyer claims smear campaign
Schwartz said the previous disciplinary actions in 1997 and 2000 did not involve patient care issues or result in findings of medical misconduct. The current charges are part of a campaign to discredit Oesterling, he said.
“We have other urologists saying what he did was within the standard of care and constitutes neither malpractice or misconduct,” Schwartz said. “There has been a campaign by particular individuals to cause harm to Dr. Oesterling’s career. … Dr. Oesterling is a man who has a history of excellent work.”
Some of the charges in the state complaint involve several of Oesterling’s patients who have also filed medical malpractice suits currently pending in Saginaw County Circuit Court, according to court records.
Oesterling currently works out of the Midwest Prostate and Urological Institute, with a main office in Saginaw and satellite offices in Frankenmuth, Mt. Pleasant and West Branch, according to the institute’s Web site, www.mpui.org. (LINK) — 7/05/2005
Tuscola Co. prosecutor issues arrest warrant for doctor who allegedly ran mid-Michigan ‘pill mills’
Tuscola County Prosecuting Attorney Mark Reene has authorized a seven-count felony warrant for the arrest of Dr. Joseph Edwin Oesterling, a mid-Michigan physician charged with running a criminal enterprise, maintaining a drug building, and five counts of delivery of a controlled substance.
If convicted, Oesterling faces up to 20 years in prison.
Reene said the arrest is the result of a seven-month investigation conducted by the Federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Tactical Diversion Squad and the Thumb Narcotics Unit into alleged over-prescribing practices at Osterling’s clinics in Caro, Saginaw, and Mount Pleasant.
Reene said Oesterling specializes in urology and “the allegations include the massive over-prescribing of such substances as hydrocodone (commonly branded as Norco), methadone, amphetamines, phentermine, oxycodone, and alprazolam (commonly branded as Xanax).”
“Stemming the trafficking of prescription controlled substances has become a priority for law enforcement across the state of Michigan, with action being taken routinely by the state of Michigan and the attorney general to curb the practices of these so-called ‘pill mills,’” Reene said in a statement Tuesday.
Reene said the charges are connected to a raid conducted in late October by the DEA and Thumb Narcotics Unit.
The raid sites and Oesterling were previously unidentified, but Reene confirmed Tuesday they were connected to Oesterling and his practices. Police seized multiple electronic records, controlled substances, and financial records.
In addition to the resulting criminal charges, Tuscola County prosecutors began civil forfeiture proceedings, via summons and complaint, concerning multiple items of personal and real property that were previously seized.
During a Tuscola County Circuit Court hearing this fall about authorities’ seizure of vehicles and personal property (and freezing of assets of Oesterling and others potentially involved), Saginaw defense lawyer Victor J. Mastromarco Jr. told the court that investigators have “turned these people’s lives upside down.”
But Tuscola County Chief Assistant Prosecutor Eric F. Wanink told Circuit Judge Amy Grace Gierhart that the medical offices, including one in Caro, prescribed a total of “some 330,000 dosage units of Norco, a (Schedule II) controlled substance, within a 16-month period.”
“A lot of hospitals” don’t even prescribe that much of the painkiller Norco in the same time period, Wanink told the judge.
In 2014, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) moved certain hydrocodone combination products – including Norco – from Schedule III to the more restrictive Schedule II.
The Controlled Substances Act places substances with the highest potential for harm and abuse in Schedule II. Hydrocodone combination products, or HCPs, are drugs containing both hydrocodone – which in itself is a Schedule II drug – and specified amounts of other substances, such as acetaminophen or aspirin, according to the DEA.
“Almost seven million Americans abuse controlled-substance prescription medications, including opioid painkillers, resulting in 22,134 Americans dying in 2011 from overdoses of prescription medications, including 16,651 from narcotic painkillers,” DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart stated in a 2014 press release.
The 2014 DEA action “recognizes that these products are some of the most addictive and potentially dangerous prescription medications available,” stated Leonhart.
It was announced at that time of the raids in October that law enforcement became aware of Oesterling’s alleged activity through pharmacists in Tuscola County who believed over-prescribing was taking place.
In Tuscola County, Oesterling practiced at Caro Medical Group, 206 Montague Ave., in Caro, at the intersection of Joy and Montague streets across from the Caro Police Department.
No one was at the office on Tuesday and a pre-recorded phone message at the business says it is closed permanently. (Story continues below photo)
Caro Medical Group, 206 Montague, Caro, is now closed. (Photo by Andrew Dietderich) Caro Medical Group, 206 Montague Ave., Caro, is now closed. (Photo by Andrew Dietderich) Caro Medical Group, formerly Caro Family Physicians P.C., introduced Oesterling to the community via a Sept. 12, 2014 Facebook post.
“Our Caro office is now offering state-of-the-art urological services! Meet one of the co-directors of (Midwest Prostate and Urological Institute),” the post stated.
“Dr. Oesterling is a world-renown urologist with more than 30 years of clinical and research experience. He trained at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD, before joining the staff at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN,” the post reads.
“After serving as the Chairman of Urology at the University of Michigan for five years, he came to the Saginaw community and joined a practice with Dr. Joseph Aquilina, in 1998.
“Dr. Oesterling is the urologist, who discovered the prostate cancer tumor marker, prostate-specific antigen (PSA) and has conducted extensive research in defining the role of PSA in the diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer.
“He has lectured at numerous universities across the United States and has travelled to more than 75 countries teaching urologists about the latest advancements in the diagnosis and management of diseases related to the urinary tract.
“Without question, he brings a wealth of urologic knowledge to the Caro Family Physicians P.C. group,” the Facebook post stated.
The post made no mention of Oesterling’s past legal wranglings – a 1997 case involving expense-account fraud that cost him his job at U-M (through resignation) and a separate case from 2005 involving alleged misconduct charges.
Reene said Tuesday the state of Michigan has suspended Oesterling’s license to practice medicine pending a formal administrative hearing.
Bond has not yet been set, nor has a date for Oesterling’s first appearance in court relating to the charges.
“The Tuscola County Prosecutor’s Office would like to commend the dedication of the DEA Tactical Diversion Squad of Detroit, Michigan and the Thumb Narcotics Unit who have worked tirelessly to bring the cases to this point,” Reene said. (LINK) — 12/27/2016
Caro Urologist Arrested On Drug, Criminal Enterprise Charges
Tuscola County prosecutors say a Caro-based urologist, with clinics in Saginaw and Mount Pleasant, has been arrested on a seven count felony warrant for operating a criminal enterprise and five counts of overprescribing Schedule 2 controlled substances.
The arrest of Doctor Joseph Oesterling caps a seven month investigation by the U. S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the multi-jurisdiction, Thumb Narcotics Unit. The drug charges involve the operation of a so-called “pill mill” with drugs including hydrocodone, methadone, oxycodone and amphetamines being prescribed for patients.
Authorities have started forfeiture proceedings for real and personal property seized during the October execution of search warrants at his clinics and residences.
The State of Michigan has suspended his medical license pending a formal administrative hearing.
No bond or court appearance date for Dr. Oesterling have been set at this time. (LINK) — 12/28/2016
MEDICAL BOARD ACTIONS
Summary Suspension 12/09/2016 Probation 07/18/2012 Fine Imposed 07/18/2012 Limited / Restricted 07/18/2012 Limited / Restricted 06/02/2010 Complaint 10/06/2011 Fine Imposed 06/02/2010 Probation 06/02/2010 Final Order 05/03/2010 Reprimanded 08/16/2000 Complaint 07/05/2005 Probation 10/28/1997 Superseding Complaint 08/14/2000 Fine Imposed 10/28/1997 Suspended 10/28/1997 Summary Suspension Dissolved 08/13/1997 Summary Suspension 08/05/1997
Niagara Falls Doctor Among Fourteen Charged in Major Prescription Drug Investigation
BUFFALO, NY. - United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Special Agent in Charge of the New York Field Division John P. Gilbride and U.S. Attorney William J. Hochul, Jr. announced today that fourteen individuals were charged in criminal complaints in connection with the use of fraudulently issued and forged prescriptions for controlled substances. Among those charged is Dr. Pravin V. Mehta, 73, of Amherst, New York, whose medical practice is located on Main Street in Niagara Falls, New York. Mehta is charged with illegal distribution of controlled substances. The charge carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, a fine of $250,000 or both.
Assistant U.S. Attorney John E. Rogowski, who is handling the case, stated that according to the complaint, Mehta issued prescriptions for controlled substances, primarily Opana and Oxycontin, to patients without a proper medical exam and outside the norms of professional medical treatment. The complaint cites ten occasions between March 2010 and September 2010, when Mehta is accused of engaging in this conduct. In one instance, Mehta prescribed a larger number of dosage units of a controlled substance to a “patient,” an individual cooperating with the investigation, knowing that the “patient” intended to share the controlled substances with another individual who was not a Mehta patient.
Also executed at the time of Mehta’s arrest was an immediate suspension order (ISO) upon Mehta’s DEA registration. This order is effective immediately and prohibits Mehta from possessing, dispensing or prescribing any controlled substances. The order was issued due to Mehta’s continued possession of a DEA registration being deemed as inconsistent with the public interest and an imminent danger to public health and safety.
“There are thousands of faces of prescription drug abuse. It could be a mother, a son, a cousin or a friend but the abuse of prescription drugs has dramatically risen to a point of concern not only in law enforcement but in our homes,” said DEA Special Agent in Charge John P. Gilbride. “Today, DEA and our state and local law enforcement partners have arrested Dr. Pravin Mehta who hid behind the sanctuary of his medical office in order for him and his coworkers to illegally distribute diverted pain medication in return for profit. Throughout this investigation it was learned that Dr. Mehta’s street name was ‘Doctor Feel Good’ and as such was the fifth highest prescriber of controlled substances in New York State. Today, ‘Doctor Feel Good’ should not be feeling ‘as’ good and will face the consequences of his illegal enterprise.”
“Our Office previously described the growing crisis in our community, and around the country, as a result of the abuse of prescription drugs,” said U.S. Attorney Hochul. “In order to protect their children, we told parents and grandparents to guard the medicine cabinets. We successfully identified and arrested street level traffickers of the substances. And we committed to following the trail of illegal prescription drug distribution to wherever it leads.”
“Today, we’re here to report that the investigation has taken us literally into a doctor’s office, where prescriptions for these dangerous, highly addictive substances were illegally issued, not just by a licensed medical doctor, but by members of his staff as well,” continued Hochul. “While I must stress that this is not an indictment of the medical profession – where the vast majority of doctors capably discharge their responsibilities and faithfully uphold their oaths – in this instance, all who took part in this operation will face the very stiff consequences of both breaking the law and abusing the public’s trust.”
“Cracking down on unscrupulous individuals deliberately trying to scam the system and profit off of hard-earned taxpayers’ dollars must be a top priority for law enforcement in this state. I would like to thank our partners, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Western District of New York along with the local office of the Drug Enforcement Administration for their continued cooperation in this effort,” said Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman. “Today’s announcement should send a clear message that we will leave no stone unturned in the fight against fraud, waste and abuse in New York State.”
The 13 other individuals named in complaints, including current and former employees of Mehta’s medical practice, were charged with obtaining and attempting to obtain controlled substances at local pharmacies by presenting prescriptions they knew were fraudulently obtained or forged. The prescriptions were on forms emanating from Mehta’s office.
Also charged: James Respress, 53, of Niagara Falls; Bari McHugh, 37, of Niagara Falls; Teri Long, 27, of Niagara Falls; Amy Gore, 37, of Niagara Falls; Chantel Stypick, 32, of Niagara Falls, a former Mehta employee; Ashley Fose, 27, of Niagara Falls; Darlene Printup, 29, of Lewiston; Dawn Figurelli, 48, of Niagara Falls a current Mehta employee; Shannon Figurelli, 25, of Niagara Falls, a former Mehta employee; Wilbert Henderson, 52, of Niagara Falls; Teresa Gansworth, 25, of Sanborn, a former Mehta employee; Chiaka Gabby, 20, of Niagara Falls; and Robert Bradley, 30, of Niagara Falls. (LINK) — 1/27/2011
Case of New York physician Pravin Mehta accused of illegal distribution of drugs, gets postponed once again
WASHINGTON, DC: The case of Dr. Pravin V. Mehta, a Niagara Falls, New York, physician who has been charged with illegal distribution of drugs and conspiracy case in a 28-count indictment in 2011, continues to drag on, as a federal judge has again agreed to one more postponement, with the hope of avoiding a trial and reaching a plea deal.
U.S. District Court Judge William Skretny granted the delay after federal prosecutors and lawyers for the man, who was known on the streets of Niagara Falls as “Dr. Feel Good,” again said they were close to a deal to settle the 28-count indictment that accuses Mehta, 76, of being at the center of a massive illegal prescription drug distribution operation, reported the Niagara Gazette.
Skretny had previously told the lawyers in the case they needed to either agree on a plea deal or get ready for trial.
Mehta, described by federal and local narcotics investigators as a prolific pill pusher, was arrested in January 2011 after a lengthy undercover probe into a flood of primarily prescription pain killers on to the Cataract City’s streets. The investigation, dubbed “Operation Whatever U Want,” also swept up 13 other individuals including some of his patients and his office staff.
They charged that Mehta illegally dispensed controlled substances, such as the pain medications Fentanyl, Hydrocodone, Oxycodone and Oxymorphone from his Main Street medical offices without “a legitimate medical purpose and not in the usual course of professional (medical) practice.”
The Gazette has previously reported that prosecutors had offered Mehta, 73, a plea deal almost two years ago but he turned the deal down, against the advice of his own defense attorneys.
The charge carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, a fine of $250,000 or both.
The complaint cites ten occasions between March 2010 and September 2010, when Mehta is accused of engaging in illegal distribution of controlled drugs. In one instance, Mehta prescribed a larger number of dosage units of a controlled substance to a “patient,” an individual cooperating with the investigation, knowing that the “patient” intended to share the controlled substances with another individual who was not a Mehta patient, according to the Justice Department. (LINK) — 10/27/2014
‘Dr. Feel Good’ pleads guilty to federal drug charges
To hear police talk, it was the lines outside Dr. Pravin V. Mehta’s Niagara Falls office, the ones that extended down the street and around the corner, that first caught their eye.
The people waiting to get in were patients eager for prescription pain medication, they say, many of them users and dealers looking for an easy way to score some pills from the doctor.
“It was like a McDonald’s drive-thru,” said Niagara Falls Police Superintendent E. Bryan DalPorto.
Mehta, one of the first doctors charged in the recent rash of prescription pill cases, admitted Thursday to handing out illegal pain medication from late 2007 to early 2011 when he was arrested.
Now 77, he will face nearly six years in prison when he is sentenced in September by U.S. District Judge William M. Skretny.
As part of a plea deal with prosecutors, the former Niagara Falls physician – he surrendered his license after his arrest – admitted handing out prescriptions without a proper medical reason.
And sometimes without doing even a basic exam.
“The patients were calling the shots,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney John E. Rogowski. “What we found out is that the patients would quite often dictate what the doctor prescribed.”
Mehta, who police claim was known as “Dr. Feel Good” on the streets, also admitted signing blank prescription forms and directing a staff member, in his absence, to fill out the rest of the forms.
Prosecutors say some of those blank, signed prescription forms were stolen by staff members and sold for cash on the streets. Four of those employees and nine others have been convicted in connection with the case.
“You could call him a wholesaler,” U.S. Attorney William J. Hochul Jr. said of Mehta. “I think it equates more to being the head of a criminal enterprise.”
Mehta was charged in a 28-count federal indictment in 2011 but ended up pleading guilty to a single count of conspiracy to distribute oxycodone and other controlled substances.
Defense attorney Joel A. Daniels declined to comment on his client’s decision to plead guilty.
The indictment against Mehta, police said at the time, targeted a doctor who had turned into a street-level drug dealer, providing powerful and addictive drugs to addicts and dealers across the region.
DalPorto said it wasn’t unusual for Niagara Falls police to pull over a drug user and discover he had a prescription from Mehta, or to see lines of people waiting to get into Mehta’s office on Main Street.
“Mehta created a culture of drug abuse that the City of Niagara Falls has never seen before,” he said.
Prosecutors said the lines outside his downtown office raised a red flag and prompted police to look into his history as a doctor. They soon discovered that, despite his relatively small practice, he was one of the highest prescribers of opiods in the state.
“Dr. Mehta was undeniably responsible for a great deal of pain and misery,” Hochul said.
Mehta, an internationally trained internist and endocrinologist, is one of four local doctors who have been charged over the last four years with doling out illegal drugs.
Shortly after Mehta’s arrest, Dr. Matthew A. Bennett of North Tonawanda was charged as well. He pleaded guilty last month.
Two other doctors – Daniel C. Gillick of Youngstown and Albert R. Cowie of Amherst – also have been charged in similar cases.
Cowie, who was arrested in April, is accused of writing illegal prescriptions for oxycodone, Percocet and hydrocodone and, with the help of others, keeping some of the pills for himself.
Gillick, who was arrested in 2012, was an emergency room doctor who later pleaded guilty to health care fraud and illegally obtaining a controlled substance. He was sentenced to six months of home confinement and two years’ probation.
Gillick’s case also gained attention because of his relationship with Christine Guilfoyle, the woman who allegedly received drugs from him. She and Aaron Morgan, a boyfriend and fellow addict, were found dead of an overdose early last year. (LINK) — 5/14/2015
Even at the age of 77, Pravin V. Mehta is one of the faces of the opiate epidemic.
The former Niagara Falls doctor signed tens of thousands of prescriptions over a five-year period and, at one time, wrote more prescriptions than all but one other doctor in New York State.
Now, the man known as “Dr. Feel Good” is going to prison for two years.
“We know it’s a problem, and you fed that problem,” U.S. District Senior Judge William M. Skretny said of Mehta and his role in the continuing crisis over opiate addictions. “The fact of the matter is, there are victims because of what you did.”
Mehta, who has a reported net worth of $13 million, also was fined $500,000. He lost his license to practice medicine several years ago.
With his wife and family watching from the courtroom gallery, the former internist broke down emotionally several times as he tried to explain what he did. “I’m disgraced,” the Amherst resident told Skretny. “I had intentions that were honorable, but my conduct was not.”
For Mehta, it’s the end of a five-year-long prosecution that painted him as one of the root causes of the local opiate epidemic.
To hear police talk, it was the lines outside Mehta’s Niagara Falls office that first raised a red flag for investigators. The people waiting to get in were patients eager for prescription pain medication, they say, many of them users and dealers looking for an easy way to score some pills.
Mehta, one of the first doctors charged in the recent rash of prescription pill cases, admitted last year to handing out illegal pain medication from late 2007 to early 2011 when he was arrested. He also admitted handing out prescriptions without a proper medical reason and sometimes without doing even a basic exam.
“I know you’re known as Dr. Feel Good,” Skretny said at one point Monday. “Maybe that’s fair. And maybe it’s not.”
Skretny offered an unusually long statement on Mehta’s conduct and his role in the opiate epidemic. He referred to the growing number of overdoses here and suggested more than once that Mehta was partly responsible for creating the current crisis.
“It’s troubling,” he told Mehta. “I don’t know if you’ve thought about the victimization of those people you tried to make feel good.”
As part of his plea deal, Mehta admitted signing blank prescription forms and directing a staff member, in his absence, to fill out the rest of the forms.
Prosecutors say that some of those blank, signed prescription forms were stolen by staff members and sold for cash on the streets. Four of those employees and nine others have been convicted in connection with the case.
“He employed drug addicts to operate a medical practice,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney John E. Rogowski.
After 35 years as a prosecutor, Rogowski said, very few things shock him, yet the memory of Mehta’s employees and patients, many of them addicts strung out on drugs, will stay with him.
Mehta, who was charged in a 28-count federal indictment in 2011, ended up pleading guilty to a single count of conspiracy to distribute oxycodone and other controlled substances.
“He’s almost 78, and all the good he’s done is gone,” defense attorney Joel L. Daniels told Skretny. “He’s a beaten man, Judge.”
Skretny, who could have sentenced Mehta to nearly six years in prison, rejected Daniels’ request for a nonjail sentence and made it clear why he thought prison time was necessary.
“You’re not the kind of drug dealer we normally get in federal court,” he said. “Are you a drug dealer? Yeah, you admitted being one.”
In trying to explain why his client did what he did, Daniels said Mehta was the kind of doctor who didn’t turn people, rich or poor, away. He also said Mehta’s patient list ballooned to a high of more than 8,000, more than triple the average of 2,500 for most internists.
“I was overwhelmed,” Mehta said. “I tried to help and care for too many patients.”
U.S. Attorney William J. Hochul Jr. said Mehta’s abusive use of prescription drugs turned his patients into “virtual zombies” and contributed to the opiate crisis in the community.
“Let today’s sentence be a message that we will continue to prosecute drug dealers of every type, whether they wear overcoats or white coats, and peddle their commodities on street corners or in doctor’s offices,” Hochul said in a statement Monday.
Mehta, an internationally trained internist and endocrinologist, is one of several local doctors who have been charged over the last five years with doling out illegal drugs.
Shortly after his arrest, Dr. Matthew A. Bennett, of North Tonawanda, was charged, as well. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years in prison.
Two other doctors – Daniel C. Gillick, of Youngstown, and Albert R. Cowie, of Amherst – also have been charged in similar cases.
Cowie, who was arrested in April, is accused of writing illegal prescriptions for oxycodone, Percocet and hydrocodone and, with the help of others, keeping some of the pills for himself.
Gillick, who was arrested in 2012, was an emergency room doctor who later pleaded guilty to health care fraud and illegally obtaining a controlled substance. He was sentenced to six months of home confinement and two years’ probation. Gillick’s case also gained attention because of his relationship with Christine D. Guilfoyle, who allegedly received drugs from him. She and Aaron Morgan, a boyfriend and fellow addict, were found dead of an overdose two years ago.
Mehta’s case was investigated by the Drug Enforcement Administration, Falls police, the Niagara County Sheriff’s Drug Task Force, the state Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, the state Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement and the Criminal Investigation Division of the IRS. (LINK) — 1/25/2016
The medical license of a psychiatrist who played a leading role in the treatment of a Virginia Beach man who committed suicide in 2011 will be suspended by the Virginia Board of Medicine on Saturday.
Virginia Beach psychiatrist Dr. Waldo Ellison informed the board he was retiring on that day. He appeared in an informal hearing in September on allegations that he violated his duty as a doctor by failing to properly diagnose attention deficit disorders and monitor patients’ use of Adderall, a stimulant that can become addictive if misused.
The doctor’s case before the board involved several patients, but the one that received the most media attention, including a 2013 New York Times story, is that of Richard Fee, a 24-year-old Virginia Beach man who committed suicide in Norfolk in 2011.
An informal committee of the board had passed Ellison’s case on to the full board to be considered for suspension or revocation. Instead, Ellison agreed to a consent order that was signed on Oct. 20 to end his practice on Saturday. He has begun informing his patients he is retiring.
The board of medicine considers his license suspended indefinitely on that date. If he wants to return to practice, he would have to wait at least 18 months and appear before the board to prove his competence to practice medicine.
Another Virginia Beach psychiatrist involved in Fee’s treatment, Dr. Charles Parker, also went before a three-member panel of the board in September. The board issued Parker a reprimand and ordered him to take courses on medical record-keeping and proper prescription practices.
Rick and Kathy Fee, Richard Fee’s parents, live in Virginia Beach and are trying to bring more attention to misdiagnosis of attention deficit disorders and overprescription of drugs such as Adderall.
They have filed a $2 million malpractice lawsuit against Ellison and Parker; trial is scheduled for July.
During a period from February 2010 to October 2011, Fee sought, and received, escalating amounts of Adderall even after his parents insisted to doctors that he was an honor student who had never shown signs of attention deficit disorder, and that he had become dangerously addicted to the stimulant.
Fee continued to get the prescriptions after he exhibited hallucinations, paranoia and violent tendencies that resulted in police calls and hospitalizations.
His prescriptions came to an abrupt end, instead of his being weaned off the drugs, and he committed suicide on Nov. 7, 2011, several weeks after his medication ran out.
Ellison was accused by the board of relying too heavily on the word of his patients and not getting enough supporting data from other sources in making a diagnosis. The board said he provided prescriptions to patients who were showing clear signs of drug abuse.
Michael Goodman, the attorney representing Ellison, emailed this statement when asked for comment:
“Dr. Ellison thought long and hard about his options: whether to appear and mount a full defense before a formal administrative hearing of the Board of Medicine or simply to retire. While he feels that most of the allegations and adverse publicity in the press have not fairly or accurately depicted the compassionate care and treatment he provided to the complainants, he ultimately concluded that it would not be productive or healthy to spend the remainder of his professional career fighting the fallout from the Board actions.” (LINK) — 10/28/2014
Va. Beach suicide lawsuit against ex-psychiatrist settled
A lawsuit against a former Virginia Beach psychiatrist that was set to begin next week has been resolved out of court, according to a lawyer who represents the parents of Richard Fee, a Virginia Beach man who committed suicide in November 2011 after being prescribed escalating doses of Adderall.
Robert Moreland, who represents Kathy and Rick Fee of Virginia Beach, said the resolution made late Thursday with former psychiatrist Waldo Ellison contains a clause to not reveal the terms.
Ellison was one of two psychiatrists who treated Richard Fee, who died at 24 in a Norfolk apartment, in the year leading up to his suicide. Moreland said the other psychiatrist, Dr. Charles Parker, had been dismissed from the $2 million suit filed in Norfolk Circuit Court in August 2013.
Richard Fee’s death gained national attention after The New York Times used his story to draw attention to prescription drug abuse. He started using Adderall, a medication to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, when he was in college and began getting the drug prescribed by Ellison when he returned to Virginia Beach after graduation.
Fee’s parents said he didn’t show any signs of an attention-deficit disorder as a child, and they questioned the diagnosis, and the drugs being prescribed.
During a period from February 2010 to October 2011, Fee sought, and received, escalating amounts of Adderall even after his parents insisted to doctors that he was an honors student who had never shown signs of attention-deficit disorder and that he had become dangerously addicted to the stimulant.
Fee continued to get the prescriptions after he experienced hallucinations, paranoia and violent tendencies that resulted in police calls and hospitalizations.
His prescriptions came to an abrupt end, instead of him being weaned off the drugs, and he committed suicide Nov. 7, 2011, several weeks after his medication ran out. His parents found him the next morning in his apartment.
Ellison and Parker were investigated by the Virginia Board of Medicine regarding Fee’s case.
Ellison was accused by the board of relying too heavily on the word of his patients and not getting enough supporting data from other sources in making a diagnosis. The board said he provided prescriptions to patients who were showing clear signs of drug abuse.
Ellison’s medical license was suspended by the board Nov. 1, which coincided with Ellison’s retirement, for improper diagnosing and monitoring practices.
Parker received a reprimand from the board, which required that he take a class in medical record-keeping and proper prescription practices.
An email and phone message left for the lawyer representing Ellison was not returned.
In an email, Kathy and Rick Fee confirmed the case had been resolved and outlined their next steps: “As far as what the future will bring, we will continue to share our concerns about what we feel is the overdiagnosis and in some cases the misdiagnosis of ADHD and ADD and the overprescribing of medication to our children.”
The couple said they will also be working with health professionals and parent advocates in a group called “Project for the Kids” to provide information to others about the mental health and well-being of youths. (LINK) — 7/07/2015
MEDICAL BOARD RECORD—DVM-2092 LICENSE STATUS/DISCIPLINARY ACTIONS—License Active; no actions listed as of 12/28/2016
Taos vet fined, has license suspended
SANTA FE – A veterinarian has had his license suspended and was fined $5,000 after the New Mexico Board of Veterinary Medicine found his treatment of several animals – including a dog whose foot fell off – at a Taos animal shelter “failed to meet minimum standards” and “was not in keeping with humane treatment.”
The decision from the board suspends Dr. Eugene Aversa’s license for a minimum of 30 days and also orders him to complete 64 hours of work in a New Mexico animal shelter facility “shadowing an experienced shelter veterinarian,” states the decision signed by board chair Rebecca Washburn and dated Friday.
Aversa and his Taos attorney Stephen Natelson could not be reached for comment late Wednesday. The board’s decision is final but notes that Aversa has 30 days from the date of the order to file an appeal in state District Court. The hearing for Aversa was held from Sept. 3-5 in Taos.
According to the 26-page decision, the allegations against Aversa include his treatment of a dog named Petey brought to the Stray Hearts Animal Shelter in Taos on March 25. Petey had a fractured paw and Aversa’s treatment plan was “wound care and bandaging.”
A shelter worker who saw Petey on many occasions testified “that the wound had an odor and the bandages were dirty.” That same day Aversa looked at the dog but did not change the animal’s bandage. “‘Aw, I was going to do that today. I guess tomorrow,‘” the witness quoted Aversa as saying. The next day when the bandage was changed “Petey’s foot fell off,” the witness testified, according to the board’s document.
A veterinary assistant at the shelter said “Petey’s bandage was not changed daily because Dr. Aversa told her the bandage material was expensive,” the document said. But Aversa testified the bandages were changed “more than you can imagine.”
The board’s decision contains eight complaints against Aversa with allegations of poor record-keeping or alleged mistreatment of 15 cats and dogs. (LINK) — 10/22/2014
Report: Veterinarian fined $5K after tossing cat to floor
Cat later found dead in its cage
TAOS, N.M. — A Taos veterinarian has had his license suspended after being accused of animal neglect and malpractice.
There have been more than a dozen claims against Dr. Eugene Aversa, and they’re all outlined in a 26-page report from the state’s Board of Veterinary Medicine.
Aversa began working at the Stray Hearts Animal Shelter in Taos in 2013.
In one case, a dog named Petey arrived at the shelter with a fractured paw. The report says Aversa didn’t change the animal’s bandage regularly and when he finally did, the dog’s foot fell off.
Petey arrived in March and wasn’t operated on until the end of July. Shelter officials said the dog suffered a lot during that time.
Ann Weaver is the former vice president of the shelter’s board. She said she resigned in March because of the lack of action from other board members. She said she was shocked when she heard stories from shelter employees.
Aversa was once giving fluids to a cat named Taffy when the needle came out and sprayed him in the face, according to the report. It said Aversa got angry and threw Taffy to the floor.
The next day a worker told the board she found the cat dead in his cage.
Aversa was suspended for 30 days after being found incompetent, negligent and not keeping with the standards of humane treatment.
Weaver said she and others hoped his license would have been taken away for good.
“All of us hope that he’ll never care for animals again,” she said.
Aversa is required to shadow an experienced shelter veterinarian and pay a $5,000 fine. If he completes the requirements, he could be put on probation for up to three years, but could practice during that time.
The shelter’s board president said Aversa’s employment was terminated this past month. (LINK) — 10/23/2014
Consider charges against vet
A figurative slap on the hand. That’s the penalty for a Taos veterinarian whose substandard and inhumane level of care is said to have led to a dog losing its paw and a cat its life – the more egregious examples among multiple abuse or neglect allegations.
While finding that Dr. Eugene Aversa’s treatment of about 20 animals “was not in keeping with humane treatment” and in some cases constituted “incompetence and gross negligence,” the State Board of Veterinary Medicine merely suspended his license for a minimum of 30 days, fined him $5,000 and ordered him to complete 64 hours of work in a New Mexico animal shelter facility.
After 30 days, the license suspension could be lifted and he will be put on probation for three years. The board issued its findings and order on Oct. 17, giving Aversa 30 days from that date to appeal to District Court.
Instead of doing that, Aversa should turn in his license and find another career. Angrily tossing Taffy the cat to the floor during a surgical procedure or neglecting to change the bandage on Petey’s fractured foot until it rotted and fell off isn’t the commitment to care one expects from a veterinarian.
Dedicated workers and volunteers at the Stray Hearts Animal Shelter in Taos reported Aversa to the state veterinary board. These people should be commended for their courage and compassion.
A person who is not a veterinarian and who committed such acts likely would face animal cruelty charges. But under New Mexico’s animal cruelty law, veterinarians are exempted from criminal charges unless they violate the Veterinary Practice Act, which the order says Aversa did.
Given the serious nature of the complaints against Aversa that led the board to assess penalties, criminal charges should be pursued. (LINK) — 11/01/2014
Travelers Rest doctor accused of issuing illegal prescriptions
A Travelers Rest doctor is accused of prescribing restricted pain medication to a former patient in the name of someone else, according to state health officials.
The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control arrested Dr. Stanley Coleman Jr., 64, on four counts of violation of drug distribution law.
Warrants state Coleman issued prescriptions for oxycodone to a woman who was once a patient on two separate instances, but he had failed to determine any medical justification for the prescription and had not seen her as a patient in nearly a year.
Additionally, warrants state Coleman issued a prescription in the name of an incarcerated male to the same woman for oxycodone. In all four cases, warrants said the woman filled the prescription at a CVS in Simpsonville.
FOX Carolina reached out to Coleman’s Travelers Rest Family Practice for comment on the case but the office said they could offer no comment. (LINK) — 10/21/2014
MICHIGAN MEDICAL BOARD RECORD—5101012069 LICENSE STATUS/DISCIPLINARY ACTIONS—License Revoked; see medical board actions at the bottom of this blog post.
Doctor Accused Of Several Sex Crimes In Emmet County
An Emmet County doctor is accused of inappropriately touching a patient.
Now, he faces multiple sex crime charges.
Richard Ferguson, a primary care doctor at Little Traverse Bay Family Medicine outside of Petoskey, is accused of inappropriate contact with a patient going back to 2012.
Ferguson is charged with 10 sex crimes including attempted sexual intercourse under the pretext of medical treatment. This all involves one patient.
Court documents say he had been treating her since she was a child, though the alleged abuse didn’t start until 2012.
Court documents say the woman worked for Ferguson during some of the abuse, and eventually quit.
He was arrested Wednesday and is now out on bond. He’ll be back in court in May.
Documents showed the victim wore a wire during the investigation and got Ferguson to confess. (LINK) — 4/25/2014
Emmet County Doctor Formally Charged With Ten Sex Crimes
We can now update you on a doctor accused of sexually abusing a patient.
Dr. Richard Ferguson was a family doctor at Little Traverse Bay Family Medicine outside of Petoskey.
The doctor had treated the patient since she was a child, and she eventually went on to work for him.
Dr. Ferguson is charged with ten sex crimes with the one victim including attempted sexual intercourse under the pretext of medical treatment.
He will be back in court in June. (LINK) — 5/07/2014
Doctor pleads guilty to sexually assaulting patient
An Emmet County doctor plead guilty on Monday to having an inappropriate relationship with a patient.
Dr. Richard Ferguson plead guilty to criminal sexual conduct, assault with the intent to commit sexual penetration, which is a 10 year felony.
According to the Emmet County Sheriff, Ferguson, 60, was arrested in April of 2014. The inappropriate doctor-patient relationship happened on June 1, 2012.
Ferguson was a family care physician at Little Traverse Bay Family Medicine on the east side of Petoskey.
The sheriff’s office says that as part of her ‘treatment’, Ferguson would repeatedly sexually assault her to ‘make her comfortable with her sexuality.’ The victim suffered from sexual abuse when she was much younger.
The victim told deputies that Ferguson would try to have intercourse during ‘therapy.’
Ferguson’s sentencing has not been scheduled. (LINK) — 8/25/2014
Michigan doctor sentenced in sexual assault
PETOSKEY, Mich. (AP) - A northern Michigan family care doctor who pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a patient under the pretense of therapy has been sentenced to 38 months to 10 years in prison.
Richard Ferguson pleaded guilty in August to a felony charge of assault with intent to commit sexual penetration and learned his punishment on Tuesday.
An Emmet County prosecutor says other charges were dropped in the plea deal.
The 60-year-old Ferguson worked for Little Traverse Bay Family Medicine in Petoskey and was arrested in April. Authorities say he treated a female patient in June 2012 for “flashbacks and repercussions” of sexual abuse when she was younger.
They say he repeatedly sexually assaulted her and hired the woman to work in his office. (LINK) — 10/22/2014
Michigan LARA Suspends Ferguson’s Medical License
A Northern Michigan doctor’s license is suspended following a sex crime conviction.
Richard Ferguson pleaded guilty to one felony count of criminal sexual conduct in Emmet County back in August.
In October, he was sentenced to a minimum of 38 months in prison.
This week, the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs suspended Ferguson’s medical license. (LINK) — 01/13/2015
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