Marysville doctor’s license suspended after 2 patient deaths
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/marysville-doctor/
This is the state of WASHINGTON… where it is mandated that METHADONE is drug of choice for Medicaid pts and it is well known that every 1000 pts, in Washington ,started on Methadone on average … 2 pts will die within a few weeks. Because prescribers are FORCED to prescribe this medication and the are not well versed on its potential lethal idiosyncrasies. But is save the state money and was apparently mandated by some “pencil pusher” with a spread sheet.
The Marysville family doctor, accused of overmedicating patients, has 20 days to reply to charges by the Washington State Department of Health.
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By Jennifer Sullivan
Seattle Times staff reporter
The state has suspended the medical license of a Marysville family doctor accused of overmedicating patients, which authorities attribute to the deaths of two people.
About half of the patients Dr. Ann C. Kammeyer saw in her family practice were people in need of help with pain management, according to the state Department of Health. After the deaths of two patients this year, the state and the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) began investigating Kammeyer.
On Sept. 1, the health department charged her with “unprofessional conduct by improperly prescribing opioid medication to numerous patients.” Her medical license, issued in 1981, was immediately suspended.
According to the statement of health-department charges: “The evidence shows a pattern of incompetence and negligence which created an unreasonable risk of harm and/or the deaths of three individuals, two of whom were her patients.”
Kammeyer has 20 days from the charging date to respond, said department spokeswoman Kelly Stowe.
“She has the right to tell her side of the story,” Stowe said.
Kammeyer, 65, could not be reached Friday. Her office phone went unanswered and a voice-mail box was full.
Kammeyer has not been charged with a crime.
According to the health department, complaints were filed against Kammeyer in 1989, 1997, twice in 1998, 2001 and in 2009. All of the complaints were closed without discipline, agency officials said.
The charges, signed by Assistant Attorney General Kristin G. Brewer and Melanie de Leon, executive director of the state Medical Quality Commission, say Kammeyer is not a pain-management specialist and is “wholly unqualified” to run a pain-management practice.
After investigating the records of the two women who died, one Feb. 10 and the other March 22, as well as looking at the records of another 10 patients, investigators concluded Kammeyer was improperly prescribing oxycodone, OxyContin, methadone, Valium, Xanax and Ativan. In many cases patients were taking lethal combinations of narcotics, the charges said.
The DEA started a separate undercover investigation into Kammeyer, using an employee of hers to write a prescription for someone she had never seen or met, according to the Department of Health.
DEA spokeswoman Jodi Underwood said Kammeyer “is the subject of an ongoing DEA investigation.” Underwood declined to comment any further.
The patient who died March 22 is referred to in the health-department charges as “Patient A.” She had a lethal combination of fentanyl, oxycodone and oxymorphone in her system — all medications prescribed by Kammeyer for chronic-pain management, fibromyalgia and mental illness, according to the charges. While the woman’s chart notes appear to have ended on Dec. 22, 2014, Kammeyer continued to prescribe her medication until March 12, charges said.
The woman who died Feb. 10, labeled “Patient B,” had a combination of alprazolam, oxycodone, ethanol, cannabis-related products and opiates in her system, according to the Department of Health. Kammeyer was treating the woman for chronic-pain syndrome, mental-health issues, hypertension and a “host of other illnesses,” charging documents said.
In addition to her two patients, the health-department charging documents allege Kammeyer contributed to the death of a third person, an adult grandson of “Patient A.” One of the woman’s fentanyl pain patches was found in his mouth.
Filed under: General Problems
When a cancer patient dies from the effects of chemotherapy, do they blame the drugs or the cancer? Treating pain patients is complex, just like treating cancer patients. If the chemotherapy saves your life, but the side effects include a new chronic pain condition, doctors call that a success. It’s past time to define what successful treatment looks like for a chronic pain patient. Doctors expect miracles from opioids, and if patients don’t successfully respond, all of a sudden they’re drug addicts. And I think keeping chronic pain patients alive from month is a little miraculous all by itself.
@pain kills…your remarks are some of the most sensible that I’ve heard in all the years that I’ve both dispensed to chronic pain patients and in being one. The opioids and chronic pain issue has become so politicized over the years that it is difficult for anyone to consider the issue with genuine clarity, little alone to be able to articulate that clarity and be free from the political polarization.
On one side there are the abusers and those that enable the behavior. On the other are the “Neo Puritans” that have driven most of the public policy for the last century. Both are minorities compared to the chronic pain patients and those that care for them and their illness and yet it is this suffering minority that ends up the most marginalized.
Appreciate the compliment. 🙂 Just keep in mind that the DEA and medical industry’s definition of “abuser” includes most pain patients. We don’t need to put any patients — whether they suffer from chronic pain, addiction, or both — on one side or another. Because the next patient they can call an abuser or drug addict is you.
A physician can not control what a patient does with medication they prescribed. Methadone has a very long half life, between 24 and 36 hours. The problem comes because for 9 days the dose of methadone goes up. If you take 100 mgs today, tomorrow 50 mgs is still in your system.
Isn’t Marijuana legal in Washington state?? And so it’s the MD’s fault the patient went and purchased it on her own?? And it’s the MD’s fault the patients grandson stole the fentanyl patch and chewed on it and died…kinda like saying I’m now responsible for loaning my friend my car who causes an accident and kills someone while driving sober. How much did these people buy off the street vs what was dispensed from the scripts?? I do note the one had alcohol in her system…gee…legally purchased product there too..contributory towards death I might say. Condolences to the families but it also doesn’t say what the mental issues were…chronic pain does a number on one’s mental health for sure. my 2 cents for now
Of course the medical board, being charged with protecting the public, suspended the good Dr.’s license in the interest of…all together now…on the count of three…1, 2, 3…Public Safety! Yep, public safety, one of the Big Three prevarications that the State used as a “boogie man” in order to scare us into giving up a some liberty for the promise of a measure of security. Where is the Dr.’s due process? This is Administrative Law. The Constitutional Gaurantees found in the Bill of Rights don’t have any sway in this arena in most cases that I’ve observed.
The other item that I find patently offensive is that the good Dr. does not have the right letters behind her name to treat chronic pain. This Expertocracy that we live in had determined that without certain letters behind ones name, such an individual does not posess adequate knowledge to competently engage in a given activity. Never mind that the Good Dr. has been practicing medicine for what appears to be at least a couple of decades and could very well have garnered through years of experience the knowledge that is necessary to competently treat chronic pain patients. She doesn’t have the correct letters behind her name, the letters that essentially constitute yet another permission slip de facto required, and in many cases issued, by the State.
So the DEA had an agent provocateur operating in the Good Dr.’s office? If I understood that passage in the article correctly, who is to say that this agent wasn’t the one writing the orders for the dead individual that the Good Dr. had not seen since January or wasn’t involved in the generation of those scripts. It reminds of the stories I’ve read where the FBI purposefully seek out and create homegrown “terrorists” though acts of prevarication and create the situations, provision of weapons or devices (all inert of course) and encourage their creations to attempt to execute heinous acts, only to swoop in and save ‘Merica from those “people” that want to destroy our freedom.
This all wreaks of a State Sponsored witch hunt where the rules are creatively reinterpreted and the scenarios are purposefully created so as to show the sheep that out dutiful “shepherds” are protecting us once and again from evil.
When are people going to wake up and withdraw their consent to be ruled from the others who presume to rule over us.