U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania issued the following announcement on June 3.
U.S. Attorney William M. McSwain announced that Langhorne podiatrist Dr. Ronald Klein will pay $75,000 and stop prescribing Schedule II opioids, a class of controlled substances with a high potential for abuse, for two years to resolve allegations that he improperly prescribed opioids to one of his patients from October 2014 to October 2016.
The settlement resolves allegations that over two years, Dr. Klein wrote prescriptions for one of his patients that had no legitimate medical purpose and were not issued in the usual course of professional practice. In particular, Klein allegedly wrote improper prescriptions, including for opioids, when multiple prescriptions were written for the same drug on the same day, were written too early based upon the previous prescription’s supply and directions for use, and were not supported by contemporaneous medical histories or physical examinations.
“Healthcare providers have an unwavering duty to their patients to ensure that opioid prescriptions are written for a legitimate medical purpose, and are consistent with the law and the accepted standard of care,” said U.S. Attorney McSwain. “This settlement is the latest example of my Office’s commitment to using all of our enforcement tools to ensure that providers are living up to that duty, and more broadly, of our commitment to taking a multi-pronged approach to combatting the opioid epidemic. We are grateful to our partners at the Drug Enforcement Administration for helping us investigate improper opioid prescriptions.”
This investigation was conducted with the Philadelphia Field Division of the Drug Enforcement Administration. For the United States Attorney’s Office, Assistant United States Attorney Anthony D. Scicchitano and Auditor Denis Cooke handled the investigation and settlement.
Original source can be found here.