Jailed Kansas Doctor in Pain Pill Storm......just give em a pill!!

Jailed Kansas Doctor in Pain Pill Storm

By ROXANA HEGEMAN

Associated Press Writer

3:59 AM EST, February 20, 2008

HAYSVILLE, Kan.

Schneider Medical Clinic was once open seven days a week for as many as 11 hours a day. Patients, scheduled 10 minutes apart, often waited hours for an appointment.

Today, its doors are shuttered and the couple who ran the clinic are in jail, charged with allegedly operating a “pill mill” linked to 56 overdose deaths.

But Dr. Stephen Schneider and his wife, nurse Linda Schneider, are getting some high-powered help: An advocacy group for chronic pain patients has taken over their criminal defense.

The New Mexico-based Pain Relief Network hopes to mount what it vows will be a landmark federal case over prescription painkillers.

“It has all the elements we want: an innocent doctor, destroyed vulnerable patients, a wonderful legal team with heart, a family that really hangs together — right in the Heartland of America. I couldn’t ask for more,” said Siobhan Reynolds, the network’s president.

Reynolds likened the federal indictment against the Schneiders to other high-profile prosecutions of physicians nationwide that it contends have spooked doctors from treating chronic pain patients.

The Schneiders were indicted in December on federal charges including conspiracy, unlawful distribution of a controlled substance resulting in death, health care fraud, illegal money transactions and money laundering. They have vehemently proclaimed their innocence.

The indictment links their clinic to the accidental overdose deaths of 56 patients. The government charged the doctor and his wife with directly causing four deaths and contributing to the deaths of 11 other patients cited in the indictment.

The indictment alleges that the doctor and his assistants wrote unlawful prescriptions for narcotic painkillers, muscle relaxers and other drugs. It states that Schneider, 54, was known as “The Pill Man” and “The Candy Man.”

The doctor’s 49-year-old wife helped run the $1 million, state-of-the-art clinic built by the couple in 2002 in this suburban community of 10,000 people.

Reynolds contends that autopsies of chronic pain patients who are treated with high doses of painkillers commonly blame overdoses when other medical causes actually caused the death.

The Associated Press reviewed 31 autopsies of clinic patients whose deaths were tied to drug overdoses and found that in 16 of those cases other causes of death also were listed. Another two deaths were ruled suicides by the coroner.

The government’s prosecution of the Kansas doctor and his wife is set against the backdrop of other unrelated celebrity deaths, including the accidental drug overdose death of actor Heath Ledger and Anna Nicole Smith.

Family and patients defended the beleaguered Kansas doctor and his wife. Pain patients signed petitions and held a rally in support of the doctor.

Pat Hatcher, Linda’s sister, said the clinic had four medical providers and contends that Schneider did not even treat all the patients whose overdose deaths are alleged by the government. She said the doctor and his wife saw people nobody else wanted to treat because those patients were uninsured.

Prescription drug abuse is widespread across the country. The number of emergency room visits nationwide linked to drug abuse has increased more than 160 percent since 1995, government statistics show.

Painkiller retail sales surged 150 percent in volume nationwide in 2001 in the wake of unprecedented marketing campaigns and an aging, aching population. But experts say high-profile prosecutions of pain management specialists has since spooked medical providers from writing pain medication.

The National Association of Attorneys General, alarmed by stepped up enforcement, sent a letter to the Drug Enforcement Administration in 2005 saying they were exerting “a chilling effect” on the willingness of physicians to treat pain patients. It was signed by the attorneys general of 29 states.

The shuttering of Schneider’s clinic has been felt by some of his former patients. Eight held a news conference Tuesday to complain that medical providers have repeatedly refused to treat them out of concern that they could be subjects of similar prosecution.

Roy Ralstin suffers from an enlarged heart and has been out of his high blood pressure medication for a week. He said he can’t find anyone to treat him or his wife, Jennifer, who suffers from rheumatoid arthritis.

The couple have called 133 doctor offices, all of whom refused to see them after finding out they were Schneider’s patients, Jennifer Ralstin said.

“They are taking away our freedom to be pain free,” Jennifer Ralstin said.