This weekly roundup features arrests, criminal proceedings, and other reports alleging improper or questionable conduct by healthcare professionals. Two years after the co-founder of a California fertility clinic was found dead in her home at the bottom of the stairs, officials ruled it a homicide and charged her physician husband, the medical director at the clinic, with one count of felony murder. (People) The Pennsylvania sports medicine doctor recently accused of inappropriately touching an adult patient while examining an ankle injury now faces more charges, including the sexual assault of two patients at his home and two students he was treating in a high school training room while giving them a massage treatment. (Penn Live) A Virginia physician whose license had previously been suspended three times for misconduct has now received a 7-year prison term for running a "pill mill" that ignored failed drug tests and sometimes let patients skip the exam room altogether. (Washington Post) A New York physician who distributed more than 2 million pain pills in the midst of the opioid epidemic was sentenced to 20 years in prison for prescribing a fatal amount of illegal opioids in 2016 to a 27-year-old patient who died days later. For the 83-year-old, the sentence will likely be for life. (New York Daily News) In Montana, a family physician was sentenced to 10 years in prison for felony sexual assault stemming from abuse that was traced back to the '90s. In court, the physician admitted to assaulting six women, in some cases offering pain pill refills while groping them, and said he groomed them over time. "I used your vulnerability to my advantage, and I abused you," he told his victims in court. (Montana Standard) A Florida psychiatrist was sentenced to more than 4 years in prison for tax evasion and fraud after claiming he was unable to work due to disability. But he continued to practice over the next decade, according to a Justice Department press release, reaping the disability benefits and concealing $1.6 million in tax-free earnings by allegedly diverting the income "to nominee individuals and sham corporations he had created to receive his payments." In Washington state, at least 12 cases of hepatitis C were traced to a nurse who worked at the hospital where the infected patients were being treated. The nurse admitted to diverting injectable narcotics from the clinic and her license was suspended. (MMWR) Source
