PHYSICIAN ARRESTED IN DRUG INQUIRY

Doctor's Medical License Suspended; 7 Patients Die Of Alleged Overdoses

An Eastern Kentucky doctor has been arrested and had his physician's
license suspended after seven of his patients died in the past year,
allegedly from drug overdoses.

Dr. Rodolfo Santos was a family practitioner at a South Shore medical
clinic who, according to the state Board of Medical Licensure, saw 40 to 60
patients a day -- all of them drug addicts who paid in cash. The board
ordered Santos to stop practicing medicine Monday.

Santos was also charged Monday with seven felony counts of prescribing a
controlled substance for nonmedical purposes. He is being held on a $70,000
cash bond in the Greenup County Detention Center on the charges. Each
carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

The medical board said Santos is the third doctor at the Plaza Health Care
clinic to be accused of drug offenses and have his license suspended. The
other two, Frederick Cohn and Yakov Drabovskiy, were indicted last summer
on federal charges of misprescribing drugs, including OxyContin, and are
awaiting trial.

For more than a year, state and federal law enforcement officials have
focused on halting trafficking in addictive prescription drugs, including
OxyContin, a painkiller blamed for dozens of deaths in Eastern Kentucky.
Two doctors in Kentucky and four in Virginia have been convicted of federal
charges of misprescribing OxyContin.

In its emergency suspension order and in a complaint issued Monday, the
board said it began investigating Santos after an Ohio coroner notified the
board in November that one of Santos' patients had died of an overdose of
Ativan, an anti-anxiety medication.

"This is a familiar pattern to us and warrants your attention," the Scioto
County coroner told the board, according to its records.

A U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent later told a board
investigator that six other patients Santos treated had died of drug
overdoses within the past year, the records state. The records do not say
what drugs Santos is accused of prescribing to those patients.

The charges filed Monday against Santos by the Fiveco Area Drug Enforcement
Task Force involved the pain medications hydrocodone and Soma; Xanax, an
anti-anxiety drug; and Adipex, a diet pill often misused as a stimulant.

Santos, when interviewed by a medical board investigator, said all his
patients were drug addicts, according to the board records.

"I know they are all addicts, but who will help them?" Santos told the
investigator, according to the records.

"He noted that his patients travel 100 miles to come see him, from Hazard,
Paintsville, Prestonsburg and Huntington, W. Va.," the investigator stated
in the records.

The investigator also stated that Santos told him that he "tells the
patients that they need to cut back on their medications. . . . He stated
that he is rehabilitating the patients, and the board should give him a medal."

The state board had another physician review the medical records of 18 of
Santos' patients, including some of those who had died of overdoses.

"Particularly troubling are the number of deaths that have occurred without
medical records even being present . . . in some instances," the board's
consultant concluded. "Within a reasonable degree of medical probability,
Dr. Santos contributed to the deaths of the cases reviewed."

"It is clear that it was primarily a cash transaction," wrote the
consultant, whom the records do not identify. "There is really no
diagnostic or therapeutic plan on the chart. The history and physical
examination and follow-up notes reflect a level of care that I would not
find acceptable in a first-year medical student."

The licensure board's complaint against Santos is the first step in
disciplinary proceedings, which could result in the revocation of his
license if he is found to have violated state laws. The board scheduled a
public hearing on the complaint for Oct. 3031.

Two other physicians who the board said had practiced at Plaza Health Care,
Cohn and Drabovskiy, are awaiting trial Aug. 14 on federal charges of
prescribing OxyContin and other drugs without a legitimate medical purpose.
The licensure board also has suspended their licenses pending the outcome
of disciplinary proceedings.

According to board records, an employee of the clinic told an investigator
that the medical practice was owned by David Proctor, who surrendered his
medical license in 2000 while he was under investigation for
inappropriately prescribing controlled substances.

A board investigator saw Proctor at the clinic recently and Proctor stated
he was there "to take care of the mail," board records state. The
consultant said it was "very troubling" that several doctors who practiced
at the clinic were in Proctor's "sphere of influence."

Another doctor, Steven P. Snyder, whom the board said was "associated with
Dr. Proctor," pleaded guilty last year to federal charges of misprescribing
drugs, including OxyContin, and surrendered his osteopathic medical license
last October.