Dr Michel Leduc
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Four Montreal-area physicians have
been suspended for six months and fined for co-signing
prescriptions sent over the internet by US patients
seeking cheap Canadian meds.
Drs Jean Vincent Desroches, Pierre
Benjamin, Hong Sen Ly and Michel Leduc were suspended
and given fines ranging from $5,000 to $25,000. In a
decision handed down September 26, the four were found
guilty of failing to provide proper care for patients.
Dr Leduc, a former mayor of Lasalle,
near Montreal, is the best known of the four.
MEDICAL
CONCERNS
Co-signing prescriptions for patients a doctor has never
seen contravenes basic medical guidelines, said Dr Yves
Lamontagne, the president of the College of Physicians
of Quebec.
"In medicine, you have to see the
patient," he said. "You have to do a full medical examination,
give a diagnosis, then create a treatment plan that
includes medications and a follow-up — which in
these cases was not done, obviously." There could be
adverse reactions from medications, overdoses or interactions,
he said, that a doctor who prescribes a drug over the
internet would not be able to monitor.
Dr Lamontagne said he was not surprised
to learn physicians in his province had taken part in
the internet prescription business. The business is
a profitable one, as prescription drugs in Canada are
often up to a third less expensive than they are in
the United States.
Dr Leduc alone earned around $70,000
from his dealings with the online pharmacy Myprescription.com.
He co-signed 14,000 prescriptions for unknown patients
over a period of just over a year, at a rate of $200
per hour. Drs Benjamin and Ly co-signed 1,240 prescriptions
at $8-10 each, and 2,000 prescriptions at $5 each, respectively.
Dr Desroches, on the other hand, didn't get involved
with the online pharmacy RX 4US to make money: he co-signed
400 prescriptions at no charge to patients he said he
felt needed his help, and refused to prescribe any narcotics.
Despite the websites' popularity
and the allure of big payouts, Dr Lamontagne says he
thinks they've stamped out the problem. "We're quite
sure there are no other physicians in Quebec involved
in this business," he said.
A
GROWING TREND
This is the first time Quebec doctors have been punished
for prescribing over the internet, but elsewhere in
Canada a number of incidents have surfaced over the
last several years. In fact, the College was initially
tipped off by the College of Physicians and Surgeons
of New Brunswick after it saw a similar case there recently.
One of the four, Dr Ly, has stated publicly that doctors
had been given no warning about the rules governing
internet prescribing. Dr Lamontagne says that's simply
not true. In fact he says that after colleagues in Alberta
alerted them to the problem in 2002, he and his co-workers
attended physicians' meetings to raise the subject and
announced the College's policy banning internet prescription
co-signs in a newsletter sent to all Quebec doctors.
Dr Lamontagne welcomes the publicity
that's accompanied the suspensions. "I hope physicians
read papers and watch television and listen to the radio,"
he said. "If they don't know about this in the future,
they are either blind or deaf."
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