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April 20, 2006

Doctors' prescription trial opens







ON TRIAL Attorneys offer opening arguments in the trial of two doctors charged with conspiring to provide illegal narcotics prescriptions.





BY DEBBIE WACHTER MORRIS DMORRIS@NCNEWSONLINE.COM





Two doctors who allegedly conspired to write mass narcotics prescripions did so out of greed, a prosecutor said yesterday. "This case is about making money. It's a case about doctors ... intentionally making as much money as they can," senior Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Baxter told a jury of three men and nine women in the courtroom of Judge J. Craig Cox. Dr. Philip G. Wagman, 48, of 1712 Gretchen Road, and Dr. Thomas Wilkins, 43, of 511 Mount Jackson Road, are accused of having distributed prescriptions for massive quantities of OxyContin and other highly addictive narcotics during 2002 and 2003. The two are charged with multiple felonies for violating the state Controlled Substance Drug Device and Cosmetic Act and Medicaid fraud. Wagman also faces a charge of flight to avoid apprehension. A third doctor charged in the September 2004 arrests -- Dr. William Mangino -- is to stand trial separately. Baxter said Wilkins, a chiropractor, and Wagman, a pain doctor, saw as many as 50 to 100 patients per day after Wagman joined Wilkins' practice in 2002. He added that patients would leave the doctors' Union Township offices -- known as Work-Med and Chiro Med at 2017 W. State St. -- with prescriptions in hand for Schedule II narcotics, "the most highly addictive narcotics known to man." Alexander Lindsay, a Butler attorney representing Wagman, said his client monitored whether his patients were selling the narcotics they were prescribed. He contended that Wagman required patients to be tested for other illegal drugs in their systems, and that he involved the state attorney general's office to help in that monitoring. Lindsay also told the jury that Wagman's patients were in chronic pain with no other solutions. The only witness Baxter called to the stand yesterday was Gregory S. Smith, special agent for the office of the attorney general. Smith described his investigation and detailed items he seized after getting a search warrant. Baxter emphasized to the jury that Wilkins is an accomplice to Wagman, and that their caseload grew by word of mouth, with the doctors handing out reference cards to patients. He told the jury the patients first would see Wilkins, then they were required to see Wagman, and that Wagman charged patients $40 or more in cash per visit and did not accept insurance. "You will hear he did not conduct periodic reviews of his patients to see if they were progressing," Baxter said. Rather, Baxter went on, they were to fill out forms indicating if they were feeling pain. If they were, they left with prescriptions, he said. He alleged the doctors "didn't do what was required by the state board of medicine in prescribing drugs." Attorney Carmen Lamancusa, representing Wilkins, waived opening arguments. Lindsay, addressing the jury, said the case is about chronic pain that never goes away. "All of us at some point ... have experienced pain. Whenever you experience pain, is there anything more important in this world than to get out of that pain?" Most patients the doctors saw had back pain related to disc disease that never goes away, he said. It impacts their lives and cannot be surgically fixed. "The mission is to allow the pain to be alleviated so they can function normally," Lindsay said.



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