DOCTOR CHARGED WITH DRUG OFFENSES

Board Suspends Eastern Kentucky Physician's License

LOUISVILLE - An Eastern Kentucky doctor has been arrested on charges
that he prescribed drugs for non-medical purposes.

Dr. Rodolfo Santos also had his physician's license suspended after
seven of his patients died in the past year, allegedly from drug overdoses.

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 non-medical 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 scheduled to stand trial Aug. 14.

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 FIVCO 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.

"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."

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.
30-31.