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Scripts for Dead Patients; School Nurse Charged; Life Sentence for 'Angel of Death'

— Bad Practice: A weekly roundup of clinicians accused, convicted, or under investigation

MedpageToday

This weekly roundup features arrests, criminal proceedings, and other reports alleging improper or questionable conduct by healthcare professionals.

A San Diego doctor for thousands of hydrocodone pills, reported the Times of San Diego. Egisto Salerno, 75, was one of seven defendants to plead guilty in federal court for his role in what prosecutors called a "pill mill" scheme. Defendants sold medications in the San Diego area and even smuggled them to Mexico. Prosecutors said that recruiters brought "patients" -- many of whom were poor or homeless -- to Salerno's office to obtain opioid prescriptions, which they handed over to the recruiters in exchange for cash.

Last week, involving three high school students -- some of which allegedly took place in the nurse's office. Prosecutors said Mark David Glenn, 51, also sent sexually graphic content to students on social media and raped a 15-year-old student in the passenger seat of his car. Glenn's nursing credentials expired in November. (KING5 News)

In Pennsylvania, another doctor pleaded to patients, according to the U.S. Justice Department. Timothy Shawl, 60, wrote prescriptions without treating, examining, or even seeing patients, and in one case prescribed oxycodone to a patient he had not conducted a physical exam on in at least five years. That patient fatally overdosed three days after Shawl wrote her last prescription. Prosecutors said the guilty plea came as part of a multistate investigation of pill-mill clinics that distributed millions of opioid pills "involving more than $800 million in loss."

An otolaryngologist in New York to settle allegations that he paid kickbacks and submitted false claims to Medicare for services provided in adult residential facilities, the Justice Department announced. Rajendra Bhayani allegedly paid cash tips, high rents, and other payments to medical management companies for exclusive access to facility residents -- many of whom had disabilities or mental illnesses -- so he could bill for allergy testing and other medical procedures that prosecutors said were unnecessary.

After his arrest for aggravated sexual assault, . Shaun Kink, 36, was arrested and charged with criminal sexual assault and abuse of an adult with a disability. Police said he forced oral sex on the victim. (WGLT)

Genene Jones, a former pediatric nurse, was after she pleaded guilty to the 1981 murder of an 11-month-old boy, Joshua Sawyer. Nicknamed the "Angel of Death," Jones is suspected to have killed almost 60 children in the San Antonio area, CNN reported. She was convicted in one child's death in the 1980s and sentenced to 99 years in prison, but was scheduled for release in 2018 had prosecutors not filed charges for the deaths of five other children including Sawyer. Under a plea deal, Jones admitted guilt only in Sawyer's death. A county prosecutor told CNN "the odds are that she will take her last breath in prison."