NURSE WANTED TO OUST 'SEEDY' PATIENTS FROM DOCTOR'S DRUG PRACTICE

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- A nurse who worked for a McLean doctor accused of
using his office as a front for drug trafficking testified that the
doctor rebuffed her concerns about patients who were "a little bit
creepy or seedy characters" and frequently demanded a high volume of
drugs.

Susan Cruz of Herndon, a nurse practitioner in the pain-management
clinic of William E. Hurwitz, said Tuesday at Hurwitz's trial that she
recommended Hurwitz discharge from the practice a group of patients
from Manassas who frequently demanded early refills of their
prescriptions for potentially illicit drugs like OxyContin.

In some cases, Cruz said she was concerned because of the patients'
incessant demands for drugs. In one case, she had learned that a
patient was facing drug charges.

"I felt they were a little bit creepy or seedy characters," she said.
"It was just a feeling I had about those patients."

Hurwitz, though, decided to keep treating the patients and prescribe
opiates in amounts that were at times massive, as much as 1,600 pills
a day in one case.

"Dr. Hurwitz said that first of all, a person is innocent until proven
guilty. He also said (my concerns) could be a social bias, because
these people came from a blue collar background," Cruz said. "And he
said that even if a patient has a problem with addiction they still
deserve pain treatment."

Many of those patients have struck plea bargains on drug charges
stemming from the investigation and testified against Hurwitz at trial.

Federal prosecutors have charged Hurwitz with numerous counts of drug
trafficking, including two cases that resulted in death. He faces up
to life in prison if convicted.

Prosecutors say he knowingly prescribed massive amounts of drugs to
addicts and drug dealers. They also allege that two patients who came
to him seeking legitimate pain treatment were prescribed such massive
amounts of drugs that he was responsible for their overdose deaths.

Hurwitz's lawyers dispute that Hurwitz's prescriptions were the cause
of those patients' deaths. They acknowledge that he prescribed at
times massive amounts of opiates to the 300 or so patients enrolled in
his clinic, but say it was part of an emerging medical trend that
encourages high-dosage opiate treatment for pain management.

Cruz, a defense witness, testified that Hurwitz employed a
collaborative approach with his patients to ensure that they were
receiving adequate pain relief.

"Only a patient can tell us how much pain he has," she
said.

It was under cross-examination from prosecutor Gene Rossi that she
testified about her concerns about some of the clinic's patients.

Prosecutors rested their case Tuesday after nearly four weeks of
testimony.

The defense team's first witness--William Barr, a pharmacology
professor at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond--was barred
from offering most of his testimony when U.S. District Judge Leonard
Wexler ruled that the defense had improperly failed to notify
prosecutors about the substance of Barr's testimony.

The trial is expected to go to the jury next week.