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Specialist Says Doctor's Prescribing Tacks Would Lure Addicts

Posted on: Thursday, 16 February 2006, 03:03 CST

By SARAH PROHASKA Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

An addiction specialist who has reviewed the files of more than 100 of Dr. Asuncion Luyao's patients described some of her decisions as "astonishing" and "unbelievable" and said Tuesday the way she issued prescriptions would "attract addicts to the office like flies to a peanut butter sandwich."

He said drug abusers tend to look for doctors who have "very few expectations," meaning they don't rigorously require old medical records or documents, usually prescribe drugs on the first visit, don't conduct a thorough examination, and tend to increase doses of medication.

Dr. Theodore Parran, who teaches at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, said he saw every one of those things in Luyao's files.

"It's dangerous, and it's not consistent with the practice of medicine," Parran said Tuesday, as prosecutors' first expert witness to testify against Luyao in her trial on six counts of manslaughter, six counts of trafficking oxycodone and one count of racketeering.

Prosecutors are trying to convince the jury that Luyao had stopped functioning as a legitimate medical doctor and was essentially dealing drugs from her office in the old Village Green shopping plaza before her 2002 arrest. Her license is now suspended.

They allege she issued excessive prescriptions for addictive narcotics in an effort to keep patients addicted so they would continue to pay an $80 office fee required for a refill.

Those practices, they say, eventually led to the deaths of six of her patients.

Defense attorney Joel Hirschhorn says Luyao was a caring and prudent physician who did not traffic pain pills nor show a reckless disregard for her patients' safety.

He is expected to call another medical expert later in the trial who has said Luyao acted in good faith when dealing with her patients and within the boundaries of good medical care.

But Parran disagreed with that and testified that based on his review of the files for the six patients who died, Luyao's actions were likely to cause bodily harm.

Parran also testified that he believed she wrote them prescriptions without a legitimate medical purpose.

"The office behavior reflected in the medical records is not consistent with the usual standard of care," Parran said. "I saw continuous prescribing in the face of obvious out-of-control behavior by patients."

During his opening statement, Hirschhorn said the prosecutors' expert witnesses have "ivory tower, premium practices" - much different than Luyao's.

"Hers was a small-town practice," Hirschhorn said. "She knew a lot of her patients. Most had no insurance and therefore could not afford the tests the state's experts said they needed to do."

Tuesday was the second time Parran traveled to Florida to testify in Luyao's case. Her first trial on the same charges last year ended with a hung jury.

The retrial continues today.

sarah_prohaska@pbpost.com

Source: Palm Beach Post

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