A prominent California pain physician and a longtime champion of the pain community has announced his retirement. Dr. Forest Tennant, and his wife and office manager, Miriam, have informed patients that they are closing their pain clinic in the Los Angeles suburb of West Covina, effective April 1. He also mentioned that he is looking forward to spending more time with his family, enjoying his hobbies, and sharing the joy of receiving a great 榮休禮物.

“On strong legal and medical advice, as I am 77 and Miriam 76, we are closing the Veract Intractable Pain Medical Clinic and taking retirement. I will write no additional opioid prescriptions after this date,” Tennant wrote in a letter to patients. “We very much regret this situation as the clinic is filled with patients we consider beloved family and friends.”

Tennant’s retirement is largely due to an ongoing DEA investigation of his opioid prescribing practices.   DEA agents raided the Tennants’ home and clinic last November, while Tennant was testifying in Montana as a defense witness in the trial of doctor accused of negligent homicide in the overdose of two patients. The Tennants arrived home to find the front door of their home had been kicked in by DEA agents.

A search warrant alleged that Tennant was part of a “drug trafficking organization” and had personally profited from the sale of high dose opioid prescriptions. Tennant has denied any wrongdoing and no charges have been filed against him, but the investigation remains open and the resulting stress and uncertainty have taken their toll.

“It’s hard to continue operating when they never closed my case, and so I’m going to retire and move on,” Tennant told PNN. “That’s on the advice of both my lawyers and my doctors.”

“You can’t do the kind of work I do and operate in legal uncertainty,” Tennant said. “You’ve got to have legal backing to treat these individuals. And I don’t know what the law is anymore.”

‘Many Patients Will Die’

“I believe many of Dr. Tennant’s patients will die because they will never find another doctor to treat their painful condition,” says Gary Snook, a Tennant patient who lives with adhesive arachnoiditis, a painful and incurable inflammation in his spinal nerves. “I haven’t decided if I will even look for another doctor, nobody will take a patient like me. And and to be honest with you, I am tired of looking, tired of being treated like an addict, tired of being treated like a curiosity and nothing more, not a human being with a serious health issue that deserves to be treated.

“Forest and Miriam treated me like a son as they did all their family, their patients. They did their best to take care of us. How could any doctor do so and pay $1,000 an hour in legal fees just to defend himself from false charges from the DEA?”

Tennant says he has operated his pain clinic basically as a charity for years. He and his wife live modestly, and drive cars that are nearly 30 years old.

“They (the DEA) think my clinic has been operated to make a great deal of money. Some years it loses money. The last two years, it actually lost money. We subsidize it,” Tennant explained.

One medical professional who has been sharply critical of Tennant’s prescribing practices is Dr. Timothy Munzing, a Kaiser Permanente family practice physician who was hired by the DEA to review Tennant’s prescriptions.

According to GovTribe, a website that tracks payments to federal contractors, Munzing is paid $300 an hour by the DEA.

In the past few months, Munzing has been paid over $250,000 by the DEA to review patient records and testify as an expert witness in DEA cases.

The agency recently created a task force to focus on doctors like Tennant who prescribe high doses of opioids. The task force appears focused solely on the dose and number of prescriptions, not on the quality of life of patients or whether they’ve been harmed.   

After three years of investigation, the DEA has not publicly produced evidence that any of Tennant’s patients have overdosed, been harmed by his treatments, or that they are selling their drugs.

Tennant says he and his wife plan to retire to Kansas, where they have real estate investments. Once out of the picture, he hopes the medical profession and law enforcement will someday come to a sensible approach about how to deal with patients who need high doses of opioids.

“I have learned that my personality and my image is such that I think its prohibiting a good debate and discussion as to how the country is going to deal with people with really severe pain relative to their opioids,” he said.

For the record, Dr. Tennant and the Tennant Foundation have given financial support to Pain News Network and are currently sponsoring PNN’s Patient Resources section.  

I guess that Dr Munzing salary as an employee of Kaiser Permanente could not fund the “life style” that he wanted to live.   I find it also interesting that both the DEA and the Medical Board of CA has hired a physician whose “specialty” is “FAMILY PRACTICE” and he comes to the conclusion – after reviewing medical records… not examining the pts… nor interviewing the pts…  that he finds a “high level of certainty”  and “…These prescribing patterns are highly suspicious for medication abuse/and or diversion“

WHERE IS THE PROOF ?… over the LAST FEW MONTHS.. .he has been paid > $250,000 … at $300/hr that is 833 hrs..  at 40 hr/wk.. that would be abt FIVE MONTHS…  and there is no mention of the $$ or time devoted to the Medical Board of CA… when did he find time to practice medicine at Kaiser Permanente ?

Out of the 150 pts that Dr Tennant treated… I wonder how many will die from untreated pain and co-morbidity issues and/or ends up committing suicide ? For those who end up committing suicide.. will their deaths just be covered up as a “opiate related death”.. I am sure that no one involved with causing Dr Tennant to give up his practice and retiring will – or could be – viewed as assisting or contributing to those suicides 🙁