A Rogers doctor arrested in connection with her prescribing practices can see patients again as long as she doesn't prescribe any more controlled substances, the Arkansas State Medical Board decided Friday.
In a 6-5 vote, the board agreed to lift an emergency order it issued in October suspending Robin Cox's medical license. It said she can return to practice, but is prohibited from prescribing opioids or other controlled substances until further notice.
Chairman Sylvia Simon, a family practice doctor in Monticello, said she shared other members' concerns about allowing Cox to go back to practicing medicine. But, she said, Cox won't be able to go back to issuing the kind of prescriptions that led to her arrest.
Other than the recent accusations related to her prescribing, the board hasn't received complaints about Cox in the past 25 years, Simon said.
"Normally, when we have doctors that are way off the rails, we've seen some smoke before," Simon said.
The 14-member board had two members absent. Simon, who didn't vote, typically only votes to break a tie.
Cox was arrested Oct. 22 after being indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of prescribing without a legitimate medical purpose outside the scope of a professional practice and one count of willfully and knowingly making a material false statement to federal investigators.
According to a news release from Western District of Arkansas U.S. Attorney Duane "Dak" Kees, Cox prescribed 214,050 tablets of oxycodone between May 2018 and September 2019.
Investigators found evidence that many of her prescriptions for opioids "were not written in the usual course of professional practice," the release says.
Cox, who was 63 at the time of her arrest, also falsely told a Drug Enforcement Administration Agent during a phone call on May 21 that she hadn't written a prescription for a patient two days earlier, according to the indictment.
In fact, she had written and signed it and given it to the patient at a fast food restaurant, the indictment says.
Cox pleaded innocent to the charges on Oct. 23 and was released on $10,000 bond.
The doctor didn't speak Friday as her attorney, Drake Mann of Little Rock, asked the Medical Board for the temporary order allowing his client to return to practice.
Mann said Cox plans to take courses on prescribing and maintaining professional boundaries with patients.
He said he hadn't yet received detailed information about the criminal charges. But he said he's represented physicians in similar cases who were "under-aware of the current environment and under-aware of the way that they can be manipulated."
"I have the sense that something like that, once we see all the facts, is probably in place here," Mann said.
Board member Rhys Branman, a cosmetic surgeon in Little Rock, said he found that explanation to be "sort of a shallow statement."
"It's hard to believe someone isn't aware of prescribing hundreds of thousands of oxycodone over a year period," he said.
Mann said he didn't mean to suggest that Cox wasn't aware of the prescriptions.
"In my experience some of these changes that I've seen have come incrementally and slowly, and you're working day to day," he said.
Board member Brian Hyatt, a psychiatrist from Rogers, said an expert who reviewed the records of five of Cox's patients on behalf of the board found that none of the patients' records justified their prescriptions.
He also said that, although Cox had a family medicine practice, 90 of her patients were prescribed a controlled substance.
"It wasn't a pain clinic or a child psychology clinic where there's going to be a lot of stimulants," he said.
Member David Staggs, a family medicine doctor in Searcy, said the prescriptions raised broader questions.
"My concern is that a doctor that does not have the judgment that prescribing 214,050 tablets of oxycodone, or $3.2 million -- I'm not sure how that translates into the judgment to practice medicine," he said.
Metro on 12/07/2019