Tag Archives: Florida

ABC News: Doctors Put Foster Children at Risk With Mind-Altering Drugs

In Florida, regulators have been grappling with that question since a 7-year-old boy, Gabriel Myers, killed himself in 2009 after being prescribed a powerful mix of psychotropic medication.

His psychiatrist, Dr. Sohail Punjwani, had, at different times, prescribed two drugs that carry black box labels — warning of the need to carefully monitor patients because of the increased risk of suicidal thoughts and behavior in children, which call for careful monitoring. However, even though Gabriel visited Punjwani’s office seven times, his foster father said Gabriel usually only spent about five minutes talking to the doctor.

Dozens arrested in Medicare mental health fraud

Federal agents have arrested dozens of suspects charged with bilking Medicare of hundreds of millions of dollars in bogus services for mental health therapy and other types of healthcare.

Agents with Health and Human Services and the FBI have fanned out across three South Florida counties, arresting clinic owners, healthcare employees, patient recruiters and assisted living facility owners who allegedly supplied hundreds of patients to the mental health clinics.

Psychiatrists with corrupt pasts found working in juvenile justice facilities and doping children

An investigation into the massive drugging of kids in Florida juvenile jails has uncovered psychiatric doctors with deplorable records working for the state’s Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ). Their histories include not only grand theft and medical malpractice, but overmedicating patients to the point of death.

In a series of outstanding articles in the Palm Beach Post, reporter Michael Laforgia lays out the heinous trail of a still unfolding investigation. It began with an expose that children in state custody were receiving heavy dosages of powerful antipsychotics; in two years, Florida bought hundreds of thousands of these tablets with no DJJ tracking system in place to detect practitioner abuse. This led to a finding that doctors giving the diagnoses had taken huge speaker fees or gifts from drug companies that make antipsychotics.

The Post’s newest article reveals psychiatrists working in the juvenile justice system whose records should have barred them. “Some psychiatrists took DJJ jobs after they were cited for breaking the law, making grave medical missteps or violating state rules,” writes Laforgia. “Others were hired after they were accused of overmedicating patients, sometimes fatally. All were empowered to prescribe drugs to jailed kids as powerful antipsychotic pills flowed freely into Florida’s homes for wayward children.”

Dosed in juvie jail: Troubled doctors hired to treat kids in state custody

By the time Florida started paying Dr. Gold Smith Dorval to counsel and medicate jailed children, the Pembroke Pines psychiatrist already had experience with kids in state custody. He had used them, authorities said, to bilk the government out of money for the poor. When Dorval pleaded no contest to a felony grand theft charge, it should have barred him, by law, from working for Florida’s Department of Juvenile Justice. It didn’t.

And, like Dorval, other doctors have emerged from past troubles and gotten jobs at DJJ – with authority to prescribe drugs to kids in state jails, a Palm Beach Post investigation has found.

Some psychiatrists took DJJ jobs after they were cited for breaking the law, making grave medical missteps or violating state rules. Others were hired after they were accused of overmedicating patients, sometimes fatally.

All were empowered to prescribe drugs to jailed kids as powerful antipsychotic pills flowed freely into Florida’s homes for wayward children.

“It’s appalling. A psychiatrist is a psychiatrist. They’re licensed, they’ve been to medical school, and there is a certain trust placed in that person’s judgment when they tell you that this child needs to be medicated,” said John Walsh, an attorney with the Palm Beach County Legal Aid Society who has represented children in juvenile court. “This just illustrates that we always have to be on guard with children.”

Creating juvenile zombies, Florida-style

They’re children of the new Florida ethic. Zombie kids warehoused on the cheap in the state’s juvenile lock-ups. Kept quiet, manageable and addled senseless by great dollops of anti-psychotic drugs.

A relatively small percentage of young inmates pumped full of pills actually suffer from the serious psychiatric disorders that the FDA allows to be treated by these powerful drugs. But adult doses of anti-psychotic drugs have a tranquilizing effect on teenage prisoners. Prescribing anti-psychotics for so many rowdy kids may be a reckless medical practice, but in an era of budget cuts and staffing shortages, it makes for smart economics.