The undisputed heavyweight champion of bigotry in Kentucky over the past two decades — and president of the hate group American Family Association of KY, Dr. Frank Simon — shall now forever be known as “Dr. Feelgood.”
From The C-J:
Louisville doctor and conservative political activist Frank Simon has been disciplined by the Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure for allegedly abusing his prescription privileges.
Simon — an allergy, immunology and internal medicine doctor — is accused of prescribing excessive amounts of drugs without proper documentation of justification.
The board issued an agreed order Friday that restricts Simon’s right to prescribe controlled substances until he completes training on professional standards and record keeping and submits to further reviews.
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According to the order, the investigation started in September 2011 when the Drug Enforcement Administration reported concerns to the board that Simon was prescribing large amounts of hydrocodone and other drugs for pain management.
We feel your pain, Frank. Good luck fighting Big Brother Obama’s armed thugs on that one.
5 Comments
I wonder what “large quantities” are after the nebulous and complicated prescription drug bill. I’m not saying he is or isn’t guilty or that I agree with his politics but not saying I trust the KBML or CJ or LEO either which all have their separate agendas. After all the KBML reportedly “over interpreted the bill” per law makers and is in the business of “disciplining” doctors. On the one hand you are “guilty” of under treating legitimate pain with chronic back problems one of the most common problems seen in primary care and on the other hand you are a prescription drug “pusher” or you jump through a bunch of burdensome documentation regulations and still wind up with the same result. It is very hard to prove or disprove pain as it correlates very poorly with imaging such as MRI. If it gets bad enough no one will prescribe pain killers for any reason except maybe postsurgical pain. There are no good answers. Overall I agree with trying to limit the amount of prescription pain medications but it has to be done carefully.
PAIN. No one feels anyone else’s pain, even Bill Clinton in his double forearm handshake and “I feel your pain ” line. If I could invent a meter to register pain I would be the wealthest person on earth. I will not hold my breath and wait. As a human being who has a lot of pain myself and is well over 60 I have learned that most young doctors and television reporters and the average younger person has no concept of chronic pain and how it ruins your life. During passing a kidney stone recently, I can guarantee anyone that the torture was so great that I told my wife if I could not get away from the pain I would stop eating and drinking and she could bury me in about a week. At that point it also hit me that it is highly likely that a lot of “accidental overdose” cases are not “accidental” at all but intentional by some who wants to end their pain once and for all with nothing else to look forward to in the future. It is usually the obvious fact that the family members of such “overdoses” did nothing theirselves to help the family member. In an article concerning this case one female states she had to “carry” her sister into the doctors office” because she was so alledgedly sedated (implying it was the pain medication that caused her to be that way)….THE SISTER CONTRIBUTED TO THE DEATH for sure. NO ONE TAKES ANY RESPONSIBILITY AND IT ALWAYS HAS TO BE SOMEONE ELSE to blame. Now we have policticians with political ambitions to be the next governor etc. and move up from their attorney jobs telling patients how they must feel and telling the doctor in face to face contact with a patient how to practice. Sorry, but we do not need politicians running medical offices. Now every innocent sufferer in KENTUCKY is being treated unfairly. The doctor who knows the patient (especially in a small community) now has to run every expensive test that might feasably show some “evidence” to support pain even though significant pain may be present with many so called “normal” tests. Tests are not black and white. There are false positives and false negative results. The person needing treatment for pain will have to have the bone scans, MRI’s, EMG’s and numerous lab test in every case from now on to keep the legislators and appointed medical licensure boards off his back. THE HECK WITH COSTS ANYMORE. The doctor can no longer be concerned with making any personal decisions or what the costs will ultimately be to the pain sufferer since he has a new multi layered self defense requirement dodging bullets from irresponsible family members, board members and legislators. Many doctors wrongfully (?) have given up and will not see any pain patients now. Perhaps they might have a few of those legislators families in their practice. Now we are told that if you are admitted to the hospital bed with pneumonia at 10 pm from the ER and need something for pain at 2 am that a KASPER inquiry will have to be make first. Perhaps this might happen to those who are so adamant that all the doctors are crooks and all the patients are drug dealers as implied by house bill 1 formulated without any professional input from primary care doctors, ER staff, hospitals etc. The State Medical Examiners office lists many cases of persons dying each year and associated with some medications in the blood or other fluids. Frequently their final conclusions are simple…they died of drugs end of story however, no other examiners ever get to do an independent autopsy. Just how careful did they disect the lung to look for blood clots etc etc. and numerous other possibilities. After all it is not hard to imagine they have a lot of cases to do and they need to get somewhere. No one is going to check out their work you can bet. How do they know that a large amount of drugs was not intentional to get out of pain ? They do not. but always want to blame a well intentioned caring doctor ….take someone with serious advanced arthritis lets say or someone who has had numerous failed spinal surgeries. Perhaps their brain function did change in the way it works over the years to tell them they were in constant pain as now being indicated in research. They are in pain nevertheless. So what if they are “addicted” to pain medicine which the FDA APPROVED. They still need relief most would argue and the condition is not going away. Now for the PAIN CENTERS : first, they are limited in how many patients they can selectively handle IF THE PERSON HAS DEEP ENOUGH POCKETS OR INSURANCE. As long as they have their mutli thousand dollar procedures and injections to perform and they are getting paid so much the better for them. THese are the same “specialist” called on by the licensure board to review cases of physicians records without having had to know and see the patients and be under the numerous persons all trying to get to the doctors at once while seeing patients…calls from the drug stores, hospitals, lawyers, nursing homes, family members, disability boards, other doctors and on and on. But these pain specialists sets the “standard of care” (at least from their office) When their implants etc fail as is frequent (true a few are improved for a short period but rarely is anyone cured) and the pain is still there the patient is handed over to a nurse practioner to write pain scripts indefinitely hence the level of care drops further with someone who knows nothing about the family and is not an advocate for the family when cost comes to play. One of my friends has a very large 4 digit bill on her credit card she has not told her husband about after paying the $150 office visits to her pain clinic and buying the very expensive long acting pain meds written for her that they insisted she have. Have any of you ever wondered why hydrocodone and oxycodone are used as much as they are? Physicians have plenty of other medication options but at $200 to $800 a month who can afford them as opposed to $20-40 for a month of hydrocodone. WAKE UP AMERICA is the old saying that comes to mind. By the way, the next time I see a young female reporter throwing around adjectives such as “scarry” or similar phrases in reporting I would like for her to have her birth deliveries the old fashion way and have no pain medication. Then she will see how scary it is to have pain. The reporters should be reporting facts not being the judge and jury on doctors and condeming them on the tv screen ruining
their reputation and any attempt to help anyone else in the future. NOW THE BOARDS : at least they have a line now stating that if no one on the board has any special expertise they can “hire” ( at the defendants expense) some “experts”. After all, what would a radiologist, pediatrician, pathologist, school teacher, pharmacist , farmer etc know about dealing with pain in a primary care office. They have zero experience in almost all cases are are politically appointed by the governor the majority of cases who may have his own political ajenda. Psychiatrists are now telling patients to go out of state if they live near a border to get anxity medications. Any new physician who would consider setting up a primary care in Kentucky today needs to be aware of the unique problems facing physicians in Kentucky and if he still considers coming here he needs a psych consult him or her self. Sixty percent of primary care visits and almost all hospitalized patients have some kind of pain. No doubt there were some cases of practice that needed to be eliminated but why did the legislators have to “punish” every doctor just to get the bad ones. For you who think the Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure are just sitting there let it be known that Kentucky ranks second in the nation for the Board “disciplining” the doctors in Kentucky. When you are number one at “disciplining” anything one might want to consider could they be over zealous in their witch hunts. The KASPER report has been around for years now and there have been obvious documented cases on the KASPER computers where a patient when to two doctors the same day, got sympathy for pain meds for a month from each doctor, then went to two different drug stores the same day …AND GUESS WHAT….NO ONE INCLUDING THE DRUG TASK FORCE TOOK ANY ACTION…WHY DO WE HAVE THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE ?? Now when the dental surgeon messes up your mouth and 48 hrs runs by you are on your own for pain ….”go see you doctor” will be the line. Since the ER will have to fill out numerous forms to administer a narcotic shot …guess what again…there is a real good chance you wil not get the treatment you deserve. The ER doctors : they will give you a non controlled drug for 48 hrs and , again , “see your doctor Monday” instead of running special reports and filling out form after form taking up their valuable time. I predict Kentucky will become one of the most escalated targets for durg dealers in the USA with such a big market awaiting them. AND you who want to put all the blame on doctors : good luck when you get some misery unless this insanity is reined in and more intelligent thought is given that has been the case thus far.
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