DEA serves search warrant at medical office in Muncie amid allegations of over prescribing
http://fox59.com/2014/10/20/dea-serving-search-warrant-at-medical-office-in-muncie/
The DEA’s state search warrant is being served at the medical office of Dr. William Hedrick. The Centers for Pain Relief clinic is located at 3301 W. Fox Ridge Lane, about a half mile from the Ball State University campus.
Dr. Hendrick is accused of over prescribing painkillers to patients as well as possible forgery and fraud. No one was arrested and no criminal charges have been filed in the ongoing investigation.
The warrant search is part of an ongoing investigation of Dr. Hedrick, who operates Centers for Pain Relief clinics at 11 other locations in northern Indiana. The Muncie location opened in July 2013 and is the 12th such clinic.
The Attorney General’s Office filed a petition with the Indiana Medical Licensing Board Monday seeking a summary suspension of Dr. Hedrick’s license to practice, alleging Hedrick represents “a clear and immediate danger to the public health and safety.”
The warrant application notes eight drug overdose deaths of patients who received prescriptions from either Dr. Hedrick or one of his nurse practitioners from January 2013 through July 2014. Those factors were grounds for authorities to request a search warrant to obtain and review various records from the Muncie clinic.
If you notice in this press release… it doesn’t state that those 8 people died of a prescription drug overdose… or some mixture/cocktail of legal/illegal drugs. Imagine that.. 12 clinics that are treating pain pts… who normally suffer from depression and anxiety and twice as likely to commit suicide .
Let’s do the math… let’s presume that each clinic has three prescribers and each saw 30 pts a day and saw the pts every 30 days.. That would means that the collective clinics would be taking care of 21,600 pts.
According to this group https://www.afsp.org/understanding-suicide/facts-and-figures
the suicide rate for the general public is 12.5/100,000 … extrapolating the 8 deaths in this patient pool, over 18 months would come up with abt 24 suicides/100,000.. which is TWICE the expected suicide rate … however.. we are dealing with a chronic pain group.. which has TWICE the rate of suicide of the general population..
So … using these numbers… the suicide rate for this pool of people should have been expected.
So is AG Zoeller… basically “blowing smoke” to get headlines ? Maybe that is why he calls his program “Bitter Pill ” http://www.in.gov/bitterpill/
Filed under: General Problems
search warrant smearch warrant. As frightening as these ‘raids’ w/ search warrants are they are small actions when compared to what the DEA has in mind for doctors and patients by using your state’s PDMP.
Yes, our good pals at the DEA, you know, the ones who are quoted as saying they aren’t medical pros and don’t intend to stand in the way of legitimate patients receiving care? Well, DEA is trying to go right to the source through the PDMP.
You know the monitoring programs designed to ‘protect’ legitimate patients and ensuring that they continue to receive their legitimate Rx while stopping the prescription drug ‘epidemic’. Well you know once the govt gets its foot in the door its damn hard to close itj when they are trying to push it all the way open. Seems the DEA feels such trivial things such as the 4th and 14th amendment hinder their ability to investigate in a timely manner. They simply disregard constitutional liberties until they are stopped. This has been shown time and time again.
It appears that doctors and patients (and by proxy all US citizens); with the help of the State of Oregon and the ACLU, have dodged a bullet in this case.
BUT it shows what regard the DEA has for your rights as citizens of this country and as disabled Americans, absolutely NO REGARD AT ALL !!
http://www.aclu-or.org/content/oregon-pdmp-v-us-dea
Attn those in SW FL. Sherrif’s department composed a ‘waiver’ for doctors to have patients sign over medical rights (no hint it was to law enforcement) @ 7:15 mark of video here:
State of Oregon and ACLU challenges DOJ/DEA-Violation of 4th amendment rights.
DEA- Database on Prescriptions -Oregon privacy protections–DEA suing for access w/out warrant.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLe4pjeUcc6ry_8P
*ATTN: Steve, If this there is a thread that is more appropriate for this information please feel free to move this reply. If its contents have already been entered on your site and I missed it, my apologies.
There’s a lawsiut against Zoeller here but there hasn’t been word boo on it in the media. Right now the ACLU would probably have to have a large group of chronic pain patients take on the state, DEA, DOJ, etc to get any ruling similar to Oregon or any kinds of.protections and obviously our AG won’t help.
Coonhound, need your help!!
“Attn those in SW FL. Sherrif’s department composed a ‘waiver’ for doctors to have patients sign over medical rights (no hint it was to law enforcement) @ 7:15 mark of video here:”
You did not include the link to the video!
Yo ca email it directly to me if you want instead of posting it to Steve’s site. I’m VERY CURIOUS AND CONCERNED as I probably should be, I live in SWFL, Sarasota, so dude, help me, send me that link!
mysinglemomlife@gmail.com
Seems the DEA is after chronic pain sufferers and going after this doctor and others like him is another way of more suicides happening, way to go DEA and you all know this and don’t care, you big bunch of bullies. Maybe I should keep my mouth shut beings though I get what I need for my chronic pain which is little of nothing but without it I don’t know what I would do. I would want to die with dignity when the time comes. I cant take my own life its against my religion, that may sound awkward to some people but I don’t want my soul ending up eternity in a worse place than I already am. If I have to live a life of suffering and go thru hell here on earth to get to Heaven then so be it. Our soul is the spiritual part of a human being that is believed to continue to exist after the body dies. The soul is regarded as subject to future reward and punishment.
We that suffer each day with chronic pain all have something in common, we have distinctive characteristics, qualities and features that separate us from others.
All of what has happened in the past few years is driving more to suicide. I’ve seen things slowly fall apart for those that suffer from chronic pain in the past year.
A suffering person can only take so much abuse before they break, its pathetic to a point of disgrace to see good people tortured slowly till they give up and take their own life.
I sure wish there was a way to have a real investigation of the DEA! The suicide stats give no reason for action, yet people get scared by the idea of any suicide. There has never been a Congressional investigation of the DEA, to my knowledge, since its founding. Sounds like it is time. Past time.
Not only ruin the doc but the nurse.practitioners as well. For those who dont know, in IN a NP can also obtain DEA nbr to write for controls. How.many of those deaths involved alcohol. And how many.pain patients are.now left higj and dry?
We are talking about a lot of patients. These patients are in chronic pain. We had one guy that came to our pharmacy, about 6 months ago, he committed suicide. He was in lots of pain and always had problems with workers comp paying for his meds. People in terrible pain may overdose unintentionally or intentionally. And, 2 patients does not sound like something out of the ordinary. In fact, you would think, since this is just a pain clinic, that there would be more. But, in any event, the DEA will ruin the doc. Makes no difference if the doc is very responsible prescriber or not, they will ruin him and put him out of business. This whole matter is similar to the video of the narc that is on another thread here. These DEA agents are going after docs and they are grasping at anything to put the doc out of practice. This makes the DEA agent look big and it makes the DEA department look like they are really doing something.
On a different subject, I ran into some old friends at Wal-Mart. The guy has had severe arthritis for years. Naproxen and etc does not help him anymore. He said he took 1 and 1/2 tablets of Norco per day. Now, he is having a problem getting it because of the DEA regulation change. As you can tell, he is no ‘druggie’ but just trying to get through the day without so much pain.