If you are a healthcare practitioner in Jacksonville, then you likely rightly follow the line of thinking that your first obligation is the well-being and satisfaction of your patients (even if that well-being requires the consistent use of prescription medications). If it is later discovered that one of your patients was abusing those substances, people may question whether or not you had a hand in allowing that abuse. You may believe the chance of facing such accusations to be impossible, yet many of those that we here at Sheppard, White, Kachergus, & DiMaggio. P.A., Attorneys & Counselors At Law have helped in past shared the same feelings, only to later be proven wrong.
Your connection to one who was abusing prescription drugs may be established by some simply because you were his or her doctor. Fortunately, the law imposes a much higher standard in order to convict you of any wrongdoing. Section 893.13.8(a) of Florida’s statutes on Drug Abuse Prevention and Control states that for actions in prescribing drugs to qualify as criminal activity, it must be shown that you:
- Knowingly assisted a patient, person or pet owner in securing a medication through false representations related to your professional practice
- Employed a trick or scheme in helping a patient, person or pet owner obtain a medication
- Knowingly wrote a prescription for a fictitious person
- Wrote a prescription in exchange for a monetary benefit
Say you prescribed a patient extra medication in anticipation that he or she would need it, even if others in your profession may not deem such a dosage to be medically necessary. That alone is not sufficient to prove you were negligent in your prescribing practices.
More information on defending yourself from allegations of assisting in another’s drug abuse can be found by continuing to explore our site.