Prescription For Abuse, Part 1C

OTHER INDICTED DOCTORS AT SOUTH SHORE CLINIC

After Dr. David Procter stopped practicing in December 1998, his South
Shore clinic contracted with several doctor-recruitment companies to supply
temporary physicians for the office.

Four of those doctors have been indicted on charges that they illegally
prescribed controlled substances.

Dr. Steven Snyder arrived in February 1999. He later told federal Drug
Enforcement Administration agents that he was initially paid $2,800 in cash
each week to write controlled substance prescriptions for 10 to 12 hours a day.

In September 1999, after Procter's license was suspended, Snyder opened his
own office in South Shore and increased his earnings to $2,100 a day,
according to records of the Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure.

Snyder stopped practicing in July 2000, and in January 2001 was indicted by
a federal grand jury on five felony counts of prescription drug and
firearms violations. He pleaded guilty to all counts as part of an April
2001 plea agreement.

In the plea, he admitted that he was addicted to painkillers, that he would
write controlled-substance prescriptions for patients with the agreement
that the patients would fill them and split the drugs with him, and that he
phoned in narcotics prescriptions for patients who called him, though he
never saw and examined them.

He also said he wrote narcotics prescriptions in the names of relatives of
his wife, Jodee; she filled them and both Snyders took them. She has
pleaded guilty to one felony count of conspiring to illegally obtain
controlled substances.

The plea agreement says Steven Snyder was responsible for the unlawful
dispensing of more than 31,000 narcotic pills in 1999 and 2000. He has
agreed to cooperate with prosecutors; no date has been set for his
sentencing. He surrendered his medical license in October 2001.

Dr. Frederick Cohn started working in Procter's clinic in September 1999
and stayed until June 2000, when he relocated his practice to Paintsville,
according to records of the Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure and clinic
financial records filed in Greenup Circuit Court.

He was arrested at his Paintsville office on Aug. 2, 2001, two days after
his medical license was suspended, and later that month was indicted by a
federal grand jury on 18 felony counts of misprescribing controlled
substances. He pleaded innocent. His original trial date of Oct. 22 was
postponed but has not yet been rescheduled.

The licensure board alleged in its suspension order that Cohn scheduled
patients at three-minute intervals, seeing as many as 158 in a single day,
and that he had prescription pads with the same combination of drugs --
Lorcet, Xanax and Soma -- handwritten in advance on each prescription.

The order quoted the conclusions of a board consultant who, after reviewing
more than 50 patients' records seized from the Paintsville office, wrote:
"This doctor cannot be said to be practicing medicine. No real history or
physical exam was performed. Only controlled substances were prescribed
except for an occasional Viagra Rx."

Dr. Fortune Williams operated out of Procter's clinic for less than six
months in 2000. He left in December that year and began practicing in a
clinic housed in an old grocery in nearby Lewis County, just outside the
small town of Garrison.

That clinic was owned by Nancy Sadler, who was the office manager of
Procter's South Shore clinic until August 2000, according to licensure
board records. Sadler was indicted by a federal grand jury in July 2002 on
a charge of conspiring with Procter to distribute controlled substances.

The licensure board suspended Williams' license on Oct. 30, 2001, after an
investigation showed that he had prescribed 2 million pain pills and
tranquilizers in 8 1/2 months, after seeing patients for an average of two
to three minutes each.

At a board hearing, Williams testified that he had 4,000 patients, the vast
majority with pain-related conditions, that prescriptions were issued only
when medically necessary and that he actually saw patients for longer than
the board investigator found.

Williams was indicted in April by a Lewis County grand jury on four felony
counts of unlawfully prescribing a controlled substance. He pleaded innocent.

Dr. Rodolfo Santos went to work at Procter's clinic in May 2001. The
Greenup County grand jury indicted him in June 2002 on nine felony counts
of illegally prescribing a controlled substance. Two counts were dismissed
in July, and Santos has pleaded innocent to the remaining charges and is
scheduled to go on trial April 14, 2003.

"I didn't do anything wrong," he told a reporter after a court appearance
in August.

The licensure board suspended his license in June, after a board consultant
reviewed the records of 18 patients and wrote: "It is alarming the number
of controlled substances that he prescribed. . . . It is clear that it was
primarily a cash transaction." The records, the consultant added, "reflect
a level of care that I would not find acceptable in a first year medical
student."

Santos told a board investigator that he had told patients to cut back on
their medications and that he "fires" them when they reach the maximum
dose, according to board records. "He stated that he is rehabilitating the
patients and the Board should give him a medal."

After his arrest, Santos told a Drug Enforcement Administration agent that
he was paid $2,500 per week, according to a DEA report filed in Greenup
Circuit Court.

His lawyer, Michael Curtis of Ashland, said Santos is retiring and doesn't
want his medical license back, though the licensure board said he has not
surrendered it.

According to Curtis, Santos "was concerned about doctor-shopping" at the
clinic several months before his arrest, and wrote a letter to the state
attorney general's office reporting his suspicions.

Jennifer Dean, a spokeswoman for the attorney general, said the office had
no record of receiving a letter from Santos.