A California physician has been charged with murder in the deaths of three patients who died of fatal overdoses. Dr. Hsiu-Ying “Lisa” Tseng, arrested earlier this week in Los Angeles, has been linked to five more fatal overdoses.
Tseng’s arrest comes two weeks after Dr Paul Volkman, the southern Ohio pill mill prescriber, was sentenced to four life sentences by a Cincinnati court. Volkman was convicted of killing four patients; he was associated with eight other deaths but there wasn’t enough direct evidence for convictions in those cases.
The DEA has dramatically stepped up its efforts to identify and charge physicians and pharmacists engaged in illegal distribution of controlled substances. Pill Nation II, the DEA’s latest initiative, resulted in the arrest of eight Florida physicians and two pharmacists, two Colorado docs, last fall, and a long list of other docs engaged in similar behavior.
Patients drove from as far away as Tempe Arizona to see Dr Tseng in her LA County office. Tseng had been under investigation by state and Federal agencies for years. She had been forced to give up her medical license just one day before her arrest, an event that occurred far too late for the three young men, all in their twenties, who had died after taking drugs prescribed by Tseng.
Tseng, charged with 20 counts of prescribing drugs – including oxycodone and aprazolam – for patients with no legitimate need for the drugs, had been under investigation by the DEA since 2007; her office was raided in 2010.
The sister of one of Tseng’s alleged victims had reported Tseng to the local district attorney three years ago, after her brother’s death from an overdose – two years after the DEA investigation began. I’m not pointing fingers at the FDA, rather noting how difficult it can be for law enforcement to:
– learn of the possibility that a crime has been committed
– investigate and determine if a crime has been committed (obtaining necessary judicial authorization for warrants while protecting patient confidentiality if appropriate)
– obtain a commitment from the prosecuting authorities that they support further investigation
– develop and substantiate enough information to give authorities confidence they have a solid case
– coordinate efforts with other investigating entities, develop the charges, and proceed with the arrest.
That’s likely scant comfort for the mother of Joey Rovero, but she’s turned her grief into action, forming the National Coalition Against Prescription Drug Abuse.
What does this mean for you?
If you suspect a doc or pharmacist is prescribing or dispensing illegally, contact the DEA at 1-877-RxAbuse (1-877-792-2873) – it’s confidential.
Mar
6
Per the media, she prescribed an average of 25 such prescriptions per day for 3 years, or 27,000 prescriptions for controlled substances. I don’t personally know how far out on the bell curve this is for an office based physician, but suspect it is on the last millimeter. That it took so long to act is in its own way questionable if not negligent on the part of the authorities.
I also noted per a TV story on CNN, that she and her husband paid 5 million cash for an office building. I doubt that she had to endure managed care discounts in what certainly must have been a cash-only practice for most of these ‘patients’.
It is unfortunate that physicians are being charged with murder but apparently necessary and appropriate.
In Louisiana during discussions about narcotics as part of a pharmacy tasks force some stakeholders refused to acknowledge that a problem exist inspite of all the different agency initiatives and data stating otherwise. it may take physicians being charged with murder to wake everybody up. Fighting this problem should be a no brainer for anyone that prescribes meds and treats patients. Unfortunately money gets in the way sometimes