A Family Member HomeCare, a Weston and Deerfield Beach Home Health Care Agency Applauds Sun-Sentinel Report: New Florida health secretary Dr. H. Frank Farmer Jr. targets pill mills, sex offenders
New health secretary targets pill mills, sex offenders
By Bob LaMendola and Alexia Campbell, Sun SentinelJanuary 22, 2012
http://www.sunsentinel.com/
Florida regulators are kicking out more medical practitioners who break the rules — from pill-mill doctors to health-care fraudsters to those having sex with patients.
This follows long-time criticism that Florida is too easy on doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other professionals.
The state's first-year health secretary, Dr. H. Frank Farmer Jr., said he has made it a top priority to yank the licenses of those who commit crimes and other serious violations.
Farmer said he has started suspending practitioners quickly after their alleged misdeeds come to light rather than letting them continue seeing patients during an investigation. He is asking disciplinary boards to be as tough as possible.
"There has been a concerted effort to crack down on … these cases that are clearly egregious," Farmer said.
Take Boca Raton pain doctor Thomas Weed, who had nine patients die of narcotic pill overdoses from 2004 to 2006 but kept seeing patients for years. Weed surrendered his license in 2010 when the state finally set a disciplinary hearing.
Some lawyers and activists question the depth of the crackdown, saying officials are focusing only on obvious problems such as shady pain clinics and massage parlors, but are not tougher on incompetent practitioners.
"They are not doing anything about those who harm patients by malpractice," said Ellen Rieback, a Plantation nurse who helps lawyers file health-care lawsuits.
The consumer group Public Citizen for years ranked Florida among five or six states with the fewest serious penalties against doctors. Still, Department of Health figures show disciplinary actions by the state are up sharply in the past two years.
In South Florida, 83 professionals had their licenses revoked by Florida disciplinary boards last year, almost double the number for 2009. Another 104 gave up their licenses to avoid a disciplinary case, up 40 percent.
Statewide, out of a million health professionals, 680 surrendered their licenses under fire or had them revoked last year, up 25 percent over 2009.
The state's get-tough effort started in 2010 before Farmer took over, when medical boards stiffened penalties for pill-mill doctors.
After becoming secretary in March, Farmer resurrected a unit to build cases against practitioners arrested or accused of serious offenses so he can suspend them quickly. His priorities: pain-pill abuse, sexual or physical assaults on patients, drug use and malpractice leading to death.
As a result, the number of South Florida professionals suspended last year while under investigation more than doubled to 103, and climbed 30 percent statewide to 326.
One was Palm Beach Gardens physician Scott Oster. In April, he was arrested in a police sting offering to trade sex for pain-pill prescriptions. Farmer suspended him within six weeks. Oster pleaded not guilty and is under house arrest.
Farmer also has asked law enforcement agencies to be more diligent about reporting arrests and convictions quickly.
Police and health officials rarely had shared information, and officers grew frustrated to see doctors they arrested soon back seeing patients, said David Gross, drug-crimes inspector for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
"There was a communication breakdown on both sides," Gross said.
Now, Gross said, the FDLE often alerts health officials before police make major arrests, so Farmer can act quickly.
"If local law enforcement doesn't tell [health officials], they might never find out," said lawyer Allen Grossman, a former general counsel for the medical board who now defends doctors. "There were a few people slipping through the cracks."
Cynthia Harris, a home-health nursing assistant, kept her license for 18 months after pleading guilty to exploiting the elderly by stealing $33,000 from a stroke patient west of Boynton Beach.
Health professionals are required to alert state officials within 30 days after pleading guilty, but Harris waited eight months. The state finally revoked her license in April 2011, three years after her arrest.
Critics said the department still takes too long to weed out practitioners such as Lake City doctor Joseph Hernandez, who had 34 patients die from pain-pill overdoses in four months before Farmer suspended him in June.
"Why is it such a lengthy process? Why should they be allowed to continue killing people?" asked Janet Colbert, a nurse and co-founder of Stop the Organized Pill Pushers Now, a parents group that pickets at pain clinics and the medical board. "We have seen progress. But there are still plenty of parents writing to us saying they just buried their child."blamendola@tribune.com or 954-356-4526apcampbell@tribune.com or 561-243-6609
Copyright © 2012, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
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