PAIN DOCTOR'S LICENSE SUSPENDED BY LA. BOARD

Action Taken After Probe Into 2 Deaths

Based on its investigation into the deaths of two patients, the state
medical licensing board has suspended for three years the license of a New
Orleans-area doctor who treated chronic pain.

In suspending the license of Dr. David Michael Jarrott, the Louisiana State
Board of Medical Examiners said, "The outcomes for two of his patients
might have been different" had he followed standard rules for treating and
monitoring them.

One of the two, whom the report describes as an addict, died of an
overdose. The other patient died of a combination of factors, including
respiratory failure and chemical abuse, according to the report.

State rules require that prescriptions be scrupulously documented because
narcotics frequently are dispensed to people suffering from chronic pain.

"Dr. Jarrott's charts are nothing more than a superficial attempt to create
the appearance that he is in compliance with the rules," the board wrote in
a 20-page report.

In treating those patients, the board said, Jarrott prescribed narcotics
liberally but failed to take precautions such as keeping track of what he
had prescribed and how the patients were affected, taking detailed
histories of their drug use, and checking to see whether they were getting
narcotics elsewhere.

The St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's Office is investigating the cases,
spokesman James Hartman said.

Jarrott, 57, has offices in Covington and in New Orleans' Mid-City
neighborhood.

Despite the board's judgment, Jarrott has his defenders.

"He's on the cutting edge of pain management," said Kay Hoyt, who works
with the therapy department in Jarrott's Covington clinic. "What he is
doing is exceptional work with these patients so they can have some
functionality in their lives."

The suspension of Jarrott's license does not begin until Dec. 26 -- three
months to the day after the licensing board's action. But from Sept. 26 on,
the board forbid him from being associated with the treatment of chronic
pain, and it fined him $5,000. The ruling does not explicitly forbid him
from prescribing narcotics.

The 90-day period was designed to give Jarrott time to find other doctors
for his patients, said C. Byron Berry Jr., the board's attorney. Until the
suspension takes effect, however, the agency did not stop Jarrott from
practicing medicine -- "as long as it's not chronic-pain management," Berry
said.

Marie Riccio Wisner, Jarrott's attorney, said she will ask the board to
rehear and reconsider the case. If that fails to win a reversal, she said
she will appeal to Civil District Court.