Tennessee’s Absolute Medical Care (AMC) Owner Convicted of Distributing Opioids

The owner of a treatment center that was a front for drug dealing in Tennessee has now been formally convicted of crimes related to the distribution of opioids. The doctor was prescribing opioids like Oxycontin to people who may have been seeking help for their addiction. Absolute Medical Care (AMC), owned by 54-year-old Hau T. La, MD, of Brentwood, was caught up in a scandal over the revelations in 2021. Now, he’s been convicted for the crimes, alongside many of his employees.

The trial revealed that while advertising addiction recovery services, Mr. La also prescribed highly addictive opioids to his clients. Many of them had come to him for help with beating their substance use disorder. Instead, they were manipulated and plied into silence with drugs while they paid in cash. Mr. La did not accept insurance.

Profiting Off The

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Alaska Doctor Wrote 20,000 Opioid Scripts Causing 5 Deaths

A doctor located in Alaska wrote over 20,000 opioid prescriptions in six years. 64-year-old David Chisholm pleaded guilty last June to unlawful dispensing and distributing a controlled substance. He has now been sentenced to nearly three years in prison. After that, he will spend 34 months in jail. He can no longer practice medicine in the State of Alaska. He will also be required to pay $25,000 in restitution.

The illegally prescribed opioids, prosecutors said, resulted in the deaths of five patients.

Illegally Prescribing Potent Opioids

Chisholm is accused of operating a “pill mill” of sorts when he illegally prescribed patients thousands of opioid pills out of his private practice, Camelot Family Health Clinic in Wasilla, Alaska. As a result, people could go to him to get a variety of opioids, including oxycodone, hydrocodone, morphine, and fentanyl.

Wasilla is …

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Doctors Seeing Increased Overdose Deaths

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The pandemic death toll is both startling and sad, but other crises, including the addiction epidemic alongside the pandemic. Doctors say that overdose deaths from the opioid epidemic are higher than they have been in years, leaving families heartbroken. The damage has largely been uncounted by the media due to the unrest and pandemic, but it’s a true problem that is bubbling beneath the surface.

Places Hit Hard By Overdose Deaths

Overdoses have increased across the board in regions already hard-hit by the addiction epidemic. In Louisiana, “Just to give you some numbers, we had 233 total overdoses in 2020 compared to 154 in 2019,” said the Jefferson Parish Coroner  Dr. Gerry Cvitanovich. ”We have seen an increase in methamphetamine as well. Still, the biggest increase is in fentanyl, literally if you are just going from year to year, in …

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Death Certificate Project Charges 9 CA Doctors With Opioid Overprescribing

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In California, nine doctors have been charged with overprescribing opioids along with other violations after a years-long investigation into their prescribing habits by a controversial state project. Dubbed the “Death Certificate Project,” the state scans death certificates to find people whose death was caused by prescription drugs such as opioids or benzos. The state then finds out what doctors prescribed a controlled substance to that patient within three years of death. (The doctors may not have been the current provider of prescriptions at the time of death, however.)

After implementing the highly controversial “Death Certificate Project,” California officials have charged nine doctors with overprescribing opioids. The state’s prescription drug database, CURES (California Controlled Substance Utilization Review and Evaluation System), flagged the doctors for investigation alongside hundreds of their peers who were presumably cleared from trouble. In the complaints, the Project’s …

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Doctors Seeing Increased Scrutiny and Punishment for Reckless Opiate Prescribing

We always are paying attention to the critical juncture of the opiate epidemic that occurs when a patient is given a prescription to “legally” obtain the addictive and potentially deadly drugs.

Increasingly, physicians assistants are getting ensnared in the corrupt prescribing of narcotic drugs, and this is somewhat expected considering their access to granting the drugs combined with the incredible sums that illicit prescribing can generate.

The doctors themselves are the ones that we feel particular disdain for, because they have so much more training and have taken the hippocratic oath not to harm their patiens.

We’ve written about Lisa Tseng getting arrested right at her office located in a Rowland Heights strip mall in Los Angeles and felt that it was a significant “shot fired” against one of the most guilty perpetrators of the opiate addiction and overdose crisis: …

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Should Doctors Focus Less on Patient Satisfaction to Reduce Prescription Drug Abuse?

Far too many health care providers are more concerned with patient satisfaction than they are with protecting patients from the risk of prescription drug abuse and addiction. This attitude is enforced by current teaching in pain management, which is largely based on a concern for providing relief for patients with chronic pain.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse estimates that roughly 116 million Americans suffer from chronic pain. Healthcare providers have long struggled with the challenges involved with the long-term treatment of pain, including the need for escalating doses as patients become tolerant to medication and the risk of addiction.

Doctors and Hospitals Worry about Negative Patient Feedback

According to Sherry Green, CEO of the National Alliance for Model State Drug Laws (NAMSDL), education for prescribers needs to focus less on patient satisfaction and more on improvements in patient functioning. …

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Southern California’s Deadly Prescribers

Drug overdoses from potent painkillers like OxyContin and Vicodin and other prescription drugs now cause more deaths than cocaine and heroin combined. According to the Los Angeles Times, law enforcement officials have not focused enough on the fact that many people overdose on drugs that they obtained with a doctor’s prescription as opposed to drugs obtained on the black market.
The Times bases this claim on an analysis of coroners’ records for 3,733 prescription drugs deaths in Southern California between 2006 and 2011. The analysis found that for nearly 50% of these cases, a drug that was prescribed to the deceased either contributed to or was the sole cause of the overdose.

Coroners’ records show that 71 doctors in Southern California had more than two patients who died from prescription drug overdose. These doctors were mostly pain specialists, psychiatrists …

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Doctors Petition for New Prescription Painkiller Rules to Limit Abuse

In an effort to protect the public from prescription drug abuse, a group of 37 doctors and public health officials have petitioned the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to change the prescription guidelines for opioid painkillers.

They have asked the FDA to change the labeling for drugs like OxyContin and Opana, prohibiting use of the drugs for treatment of moderate pain, adding a maximum daily dosage and specifying that patients should only take them for 90 days if not under treatment for cancer-related pain.

By changing the labels of these prescription drugs, the group hopes to limit promotion of the drugs for non-approved uses by drug makers like Purdue Pharma, Pfizer and Endo Health Solutions. OxyContin and Opana, which are both extended-release painkillers, are marketed by Purdue Pharma and Endo Health for the treatment of moderate pain to severe pain.…
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Florida Governor Declares Victory Over Pill Mills

It’s been a year since law enforcement agencies in Florida began to crack down on “pill mills” that were responsible for the widespread distribution of prescription painkillers like oxycodone (marketed under the names OxyContin, Roxicodone and Oxyfast). This week, Governor Scott is calling the efforts of regional law enforcement teams a success, with 213 pill mill clinics shut down in the past year. The Governor also stated that nearly half a million pills were taken off the streets and more than 2000 drug-related arrests were made.

Despite this impressive arrest record, Florida still appears to have more work to do in ridding itself of its prescription drug problem. The number of statewide deaths from prescription drugs dropped only 8 percent between 2010 and 2011. Prescription drugs still kill more people than illegal drugs in the state.  Florida Attorney General …

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CVS Blacklists Florida Doctors Who Write Too Many Painkiller Prescriptions

In a move that could set a nationwide precedent, CVS recently sent letters to a group of high-prescribing Florida doctors advising them that the company’s pharmacies will no longer fill their prescriptions for painkillers and other dangerous drugs.  According to the Orlando Sentinel, the action has been described as blacklisting by some of the doctors and at least one doctor who received a letter has responded with legal action against CVS.

In a prepared statement, CVS stated that it informed a small group of Florida doctors that their prescriptions for Schedule II narcotics will no longer be filled.  The company was not specific about how many doctors have been notified but stated that the action was taken in the interest of keeping controlled substances out of the wrong hands and preventing drug abuse.  CVS operates more than 700 pharmacies in …

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