MORE SOUTH SHORE DOCTORS INVESTIGATED

Medical Board Plans Hearings On Prescriptions

The pursuit of doctors who allegedly over prescribe narcotics and diet
pills is continuing in South Shore, a small Eastern Kentucky community
where prescription drugs were openly sold in a shopping-center parking lot.

Five doctors who once practiced in a clinic in the strip mall have already
been convicted on drug charges in state or federal court, and the Kentucky
Board of Medical Licensure issued complaints this month against three
additional doctors.

Lloyd Vest, the board's general counsel, said the agency is not targeting
doctors in South Shore and by law can only investigate physicians when it
receives a grievance or information from law enforcement or other sources
about alleged violations.

"We've had lots of agencies looking, lots of public attention to what's
going on down there," Vest said.

The board issued an emergency order May 23 temporarily prohibiting Dr.
Adrian Collins, a semi-retired general practitioner, from prescribing
controlled substances until completion of the disciplinary case against him.

The board's complaint alleges that Collins prescribed diet pills without
examining patients.

"In nearly every case reviewed, Dr. Collins appears to have departed from
the standard of care in not performing even minimal physical examination,"
a board consultant wrote after reviewing patient records.

The investigation of Collins began in June 2001, when the board received an
anonymous grievance that accused him of providing diet medication to "a
large number of people who are not overweight and who travel some distances
to see him," according to the complaint.

Collins told a board investigator that patients could have four office
visits a year and he would prescribe them diet pills if they lost at least
four pounds between each visit, the complaint said.

The medical board also issued a complaint against Dr. Willie Josey,
accusing him of prescribing excessive amounts of narcotics.

The Kentucky board had suspended Josey's license last June, after he was
indicted by an Ohio grand jury on 13 counts of obtaining the narcotics
hydrocodone and oxycodone by deception in 2000 and 2001. Josey had suffered
a relapse of his addiction to painkillers, according to records of the
State Medical Board of Ohio.

In connection with its investigation, the Kentucky board asked a consultant
to review Josey's prescribing of controlled substances for patients.

After examining the medical records of 19 patients, the consultant wrote
that Josey did not use "proper precautions to avoid habituation or
addiction. &elipse; I recognized a pattern of excessive prescribing of
controlled substances particularly among families and I suspect that much
of these prescribed medications were diverted" for non-medical purposes.

Then in November, Josey pleaded guilty to the 13 counts in Ohio, but the
conviction was stayed on the condition he complete a three-year treatment
program, according to Ohio medical board records.

A second diet doctor, W. Rex Duff, was suspended earlier this month after
the board filed a complaint accusing him of prescribing diet pills without
performing adequate physical examinations.

Duff's "Be Slim Weight Loss" clinic is in the South Shore Plaza, just two
doors down from Plaza Healthcare, the now-closed office of Dr. David Procter.

Procter pleaded guilty in federal court last month to felony
prescription-drug charges, and four other doctors he recruited to work in
the clinic have been convicted or entered guilty pleas on charges they
illegally dispensed narcotics.

The medical board has scheduled public hearings in October for Collins,
Josey and Duff, after which it will decide whether to discipline the
physicians.

Possible discipline includes loss of their licenses, restrictions on their
prescribing privileges or probation.