St. Pete Times Investigation: Hard to Stop Doctors in Pill Mills

A St. Petersburg Times investigation finds that nearly a fourth of doctors disciplined for misprescribing pain medications continues to practice with a clean medical license.

After reviewing the cases of every doctor disciplined for inappropriately prescribing pain medications, the St. Petersburg Times found nearly a fourth of those doctors continue to freely practice medicine with clean licenses.

New laws take effect Oct. 1 that are supposed to crack down on pain clinics and so-called "pill mills" in Florida, but they might not impact many of the doctors who are writing the prescriptions fueling those clinics, according to Times reporter Letitia Stein.

"They don't address the fact that we found a lot of the doctors who are getting in trouble for inappropriate prescribing -- these are just the doctors who are being disciplined -- are not necessarily working in pain clinics," said Stein, one of the reporters who worked on the investigation.

"They often have no specialized training in pain management. They may be family physicians or general internists, OB-GYNs, even urologists and pediatricians."

The Times' review also found that prison time might not even mean the end of a doctor's practice.

"If no action was taken against their medical license or if the action that was taken was probation and a fine, once that probation is over, you're back to being able to practice in the clear," Stein said.

"It would be the same, I suppose, as anything else in the criminal justice system. After you've done your time, you're out of jail and you don't have to do anything further once your probation is over," she said.

Stein said although most doctors handle controlled narcotics like OxyContin and roxicodone appropriately, it only takes a few bad doctors to put thousands of pills on the streets.

A complicated Web of state laws, law enforcement, and professional licensing boards deals with doctors who are caught. But police, lawmakers and regulators all blame each other for not doing enough to stop problem doctors.

"There are a lot of different groups and agencies who are involved in this problem, which I suppose sets the stage for that kind of blame game," Stein said. "Additionally, there are a lot of communication gaps that allow potentially some physicians to fall through the cracks."

Click here to read Part 1 of the Times investigation.

Click here to read Part 2 of the Times investigation.