County pharmacists have licenses suspended and are ordered to sell their businesses
http://www.journal-eureka.com/news/jones_county/article_a0ceab20-4f03-11e4-9435-001a4bcf6878.html
From the article:
Father and son pharmacists Phillip Tuetken and Christopher Tuetken each had their licenses to practice pharmacy suspended by the Iowa Board of Pharmacy one day apart for seemingly unrelated infractions.
Christopher Tuetken owns several drug stores in the area, including Long Drug in Monticello and Wyoming Drug in Wyoming. As part of the pharmacy board’s decision, he was ordered to sell all of them by Dec. 1.
His license to practice pharmacy was suspended for one year, and he was forever prohibited from owning or managing a pharmacy or holding the position of pharmacist-in-charge. The order came at an Aug. 27 disciplinary hearing.
An employee at Downtown Drug in Cedar Rapids, a pharmacy Christopher Tuetken owned and served as the pharmacist-in-charge at, stole at least 18,000 tablets of hydrocodone over at least a two-year period, according to documents obtained from the pharmacy board’s website.
“I should have known better,” Christopher Tuetken said, adding that he was “caught blindsided” when his trusted employee Chuck Long betrayed him.
“The board has grave concerns about [Christopher] Tuetken’s ability to safely practice pharmacy,” the board’s decision reads. “The evidence demonstrates that Tuetken spread himself entirely too thin, as owner of up to 12 pharmacies at one point. Tuetken’s vast business interests left him unable to manage the day-to-day requirements of being a pharmacist-in-charge at Downtown Drug. This practice of overextending himself seems to have led directly to the majority of the violations here.”
I have heard time and again… BOP’s stating that they will not interfere with how a business operates… when there is complaints of under staffing in the Rx dept…yet.. this BOP took the stance that this RPH was “spread to thin”…
I wonder how many Rx depts have had “unaccounted” 18 K opiate doses and was required to “sell the store”… I am aware of at least 3 in the last year short more than 18 K … I wonder what would have been the outcome if it had been a chain or hospital.. that had same/similar issues. ?
Filed under: General Problems
Hey boilerrph thanks for sharing about this case in NY. After reading up on the details I started to do some thinking then I crushed some numbers. I figured that I would have to be a patient at my pain management clinic for 75 years and sell every single pill I ever received during that time to equal the amount of pills that the director @ Beth Israel diverted! Add in all those cases where just a ‘measly’ 18,ooo or so odd pills like @ CVS in California, etc, etc go missing and I began to wonder if we aren’t drug testing the wrong people here:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/snp/downloads/pdf/MSBI.pdf
http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2014/07/mount_sinai_beth_israel_pharma.html
AND 4 years to find out 193,ooo oxycodone were missing? RUFKme? Director admits substance abuse problem while his attorney says ‘kingpin’ charge is inappropriate! 142 oxycodone pills per day? How do you hide this amount of use at a hospital, no way, just no way. http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2014/07/hospital_pharmacy_director_was.html#incart_related_stories
AND Why do legit patients continue to be dragged through the mud when it is obvious that the bulk of the diverted medication
comes from pharmacies (pharmacists and techs), distributors, rouge ‘pill mill’ docs writing for addicts, online ;overseas’ pharmacies,and those ‘lost’ in transit during shipping? Tip of the iceberg. I say lets go back to the days where you can order anything you need out of the sears catalog. Sign a waiver after being consulted by a pharmacist and a doctor and let the patient decide what meds they need.
15min spent watching Drugs Inc on National Geographic, do NOT eat prior to watching or you may lose your meal, should be enough to say enough is enough.
Our hard earned tax dollars are spent surveiling small time drug dealers then ‘flipping’ them and working their way up the chain of command. All the while LE agents say that their efforts at best disrupt the supply for a short time and send a message about what happens when you sell drugs. The next segment shows a tractor trailer of pills seized crossing the border (wonder how many hundred got through?). I am glad that our government is comfortable putting guns power and money in the hands of criminals just to keep the beaurocratic machine oiled and running. When govt agencies are doing more harm than good it is time for a change, this country and its citizens need to wake up and reform our priorities. We should pass new legistlation to reign in powerful alphabet soup orgs like the DEA, ATF, and others who seem to beleive that they are not accountable to the people, you know the ones who pay their salaries. This would most likely be ineffective though as most bills passed are not given enough time before voting for the congressmen to actually read through them. Where to begin………………..
A fine and business as usual. You certainly didnt hear the New York State Board order the shutdown of Beth Israel Hospital, after the Director was arrested for diverting just under a million tablets of hydrocodone and other controls a couple of months ago