Posted on 08/16/2019 9:48:34 AM PDT by grumpygresh
1. The California Attorney General's office reported Dr. Keller was arrested and arraigned in connection with five patient deaths after he prescribed them "dangerously high levels of addictive opioids and narcotics." He allegedly prescribed Vicodin, oxycodone, OxyContin, Percocet and morphine outside acceptable levels for clinical practice.
2. Dr. Keller faces second-degree murder charges related to nine patients and felony elder abuse charges connected with five patient deaths. He is in custody, and his bail review is scheduled for Aug. 20.
3. A complaint filed in the Superior Court for Santa Rosa County alleges Dr. Keller prescribed maximum dosages of 180 to 300 pills per prescription, which exceeds the 50 mg Morphine Equivalent Dosage standard set by the CDC. He received red flag warnings from pharmacies and insurance companies, but continued to prescribe the high level of dosages
(Excerpt) Read more at beckersspine.com ...
If I read that right he’s got 14 patients dead of OD. Prosecuting that isn’t overreach. He probably didn’t intend them harm, that’s why it’s 2nd degree.
He received red flag warnings from pharmacies and insurance companies, but continued to prescribe the high level of dosages.
And why did the pharmacists fill the drugs then? What about the medical board? Shouldn’t they be in a better position to judge this doctors behavior than a government bureaucrat?
Everyone loves a scapegoat. But if you want to solve the problem, you need to look for the root causes. Just saying that you are a personal sufferer does not change the facts.
In our state, opioid deaths have declined slightly about 10% while prescription have gone down well over 30%. But that being said, the opioid overdoses are actually UP about 10%. The good news is that narcan is reducing overdose deaths. The bad news is that the illicit drug market is still increasing.
So, lets spend more money on interdiction. Having this doctor go through a murder trial that could last 2 weeks and putting him in prison for life is a waste of resources. You could pull his license for a lot less money and he would never prescribe anything ever again. You could make him pay a fine and do community service at an Indian reservation as his penalty.
I can tell you one thing is certain. Putting this guy in prison won’t mean one less death from opioids. And the resources spent going after this guy could have been better spent.
Reducing the opioid prescription to zero will obviously mean no deaths from opioid prescriptions. But the same can be said with reducing surgeries to zero. We will always have drug abuse and in all likelihood the overdose rate will not substantially improve. But if we focused on interdiction first, we could reduce the overall supply in the illicit market.
You might not like to hears this but an illicit drug source is more dangerous that a stolen prescribed pill. That’s because the illicit drug can have anything in it.
Dejerine-Roussy syndrome...
See post #10
Obviously there has to be a lot more done that just jailing crooked doctors. That is an extremely small part of the solution.
If the United States was serious about this problem, we would greatly increase interdiction, seriously penalize all those on the take from the drug cartels (and I suspect the number of those on the take is FAR bigger than we can imagine), and execute drug dealers. The problem would be greatly reduced very quickly.
And WHAT DRUG do you think got kids on the way to buying cheaper heroin??
Try Pot and booze, probably and the synthetic stuff or stuff they stole from the family medicine cabinets. Roxies are only part of the mélange of influences bring folks to heroin. Then, looking for a stronger buzz the kids find Heroin.
Heroin, starting in 2013 started coming in cheaper and purer, so cheap it was cheaper for the dealers to sell it unadulterated. Heroin has been around a lot longer than Roxies. Try being in the medical profession for 35 years like me so that you can see the whole perspective of what is happening here. Oxicodone has been around for a while, almost 40 years,dilaudid,morphine, codeine longer still;...now all of a sudden in the last 5 years since Obama’s CDC made a big stink about it...it’s like this huge problem. The recent major increase of rates of overdose of heroin started happening when the pain meds started to be cut off. There has always been narcotic drug addiction issues, oxycodone is just the latest “boo(!)” med. Yet what do I hear from patients when they come for some type of medical issue, especially from those with drug histories? It’s not the roxies they ask for, they are asking for the dilaudid(”mo’phine don’t do “sh—”) said one recent patient of mine.
No, I think part of what is going on is to cut back on pain meds for those who really need it so that they become willing customers of the dealers who are selling the heroin cut with fentanyl. The elites get money in their banks that they can launder and take their percentages from. The elites would like majority of the populace as weak, mind addled, confused, and drug addicted as they can affect in order to bring the nation down!
I’m also waiting for the politician to come along who will be able to turn a pro-pain med message into votes. How dare evil “inscribe weelly bad powitician’s name here” take away pain meds from patients who really need them!(will be the expressed faux outrage)
Given the millions now having to cope with permanent intractable pain while finding it difficult to get the relief they need, such a politician just might find receptive ears and a lot of votes!
If there was no intent, I would think manslaughter.
But here’s where it’s sticky.
1. Probably most patients deviated from the prescription because they wanted to commit suicide or perhaps they were having so much pain that they intentionally over consumed.
2. Some of these patients were probably doing illicit drugs. In that case there would be more culpability for the person selling or giving the illicit drug (dealer) and the recipient taking the illicit drug.
3. In patients that have been on opioids there is typically tolerance built up to the opioid. So if the person takes another drug illicitly (or alcohol) but does not necessary increase the opioid, it is more likely that the additional introduced drug is the culprit, either that or the combination.
4. There is no way to predict when, where and how a patient will commit suicide. Even if a doctor suspects suicide, they would need to get an emergency detention that can still be refused by the patient in nearly all circumstances. Going off the opioid wouldn’t necessarily prevent a suicide (and might actually precipitate one), and anti-depressants do not reliably prevent suicide and take some time to works anyways.
People have to be responsible for taking their meds as prescribed. In the same way we also expect people to own guns to be responsible and follow directions. Or people that consume alcohol.
I don’t know if the rate of the number of scripts was high or the amounts he was writing on them were seen as too high. Of course the pharmacies who actually did fill the scripts for the doctor must also be held to account and the pharmacists arrested for these murders as well, if the law is to be applied consistently!
He might not have had large numbers of terminal brain cancer or other painful neurologically afflicted folks in his practice, but in a neuro surgeon’s practice such patients would be the ones who would receive the most scripts for pain meds!
Corrupt prosecutors love the headlines.
Living with extreme pain is torture and is NOT a solution.
This type of pain medication is no longer allowed to have refills, you would have to return to the Dr. for a new script each time you needed more medication which may be why he gave the patient so many pills with each script!! My elderly mother was on hydrocodone for years due to severe arthritis she could not even hold a fork to eat!!! Dr. Would give her 2 tabs a day for 30 days and 2 refills, then he was not allowed to refill the medication so he started prescribing 180 tabs all in one script!! This mess with the pain meds has become a real problems for Dr.’s with elderly patients and cancer patients they are under intense scrutiny now!!! We took her off the pains meds completely and put her on CBD tabs instead it is now legal in CA.!!! The AMAZING thing is the CBD works better than the pain meds!!!
That’s right. It might seem counterintuitive to some here, but the oxycodone on the street is safer than heroin or fentanyl.
Now, I’m not recommending that doctors dole out opioids indiscriminately, I am only making an observation.
If we look at the addiction community, they do continue to treat addicts with methadone (an opioid) that continue to buy from the street because the addicts actually consume less street drugs. This has resulted in less morbidity. In Switzerland, they have improved outcomes by allowing addicts to get clean needles and pharmaceutical grade heroin.
I would hope that everyone would agree that the primary goal here is to reduce overdose deaths. This is certainly not the goal for DEA or prosecutors. If they can fool the public into thinking that they are doing good, and they can profit from it, anything goes.
Nope. In the OR are many witnesses.
https://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/9904436-181/santa-rosa-surgeon-faces-murder?sba=AAS
Suspended license in his past.
I haven’t heard of TD anywhere but a Remington Steele episode.
No problem.
I'm very skeptical regarding claims that physicians are playing a role in the opiod "crisis".
Most people haven’t. I doubt most doctors ever see a case. Neurosurgeons see it all the time.
Politicians don't give a darn about about that. They want to control us and every aspect of our lives. I think most of them are narcissists and actually enjoy seeing people suffer while under their control. I makes them feel powerful.
They know that with their political power they will never have to suffer as they will always have access to whatever pain medications they need.
But more deaths from other forms of suicide as well as converting some honest chronic pain patients into criminals using illicit drugs.
You’re right and that’s the concept that the stupid people can’t seem to grasp. They think that the problem will go away if opioids are banned.
Obviously they never heard of prohibition and the roaring 20s. It’s really too bad because alcohol has no real medicinal benefits and its legal (and it should be) but opioids have many positive benefits and its hard for legitmate chronic pain patients to access.
The anti-opioid campaign has gotten so extreme that the hallucinogenic drug ketamine is being promoted as a replacement for opioids in the OR and for acute and chronic pain.
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