Doctor fined for improper Internet prescriptions
A Quad Cities doctor who admitted on national TV last year that he prescribed pain medication to unfamiliar patients via the Internet has agreed to pay a $10,000 fine.
Dr. Paul Bolger, 44, reached a settlement with the Iowa Board of Medicine last week, according to documents released Wednesday.
Bolger was confronted last spring by a CBS News crew investigating sales of expensive painkilling creams to soldiers and veterans. A CBS reporter had entered his own information into a website, requesting medication for pain and scars. Two weeks later, he received the medication from a California pharmacy, with a notation that Bolger had written the prescription.
In an interview that aired last May, CBS reporter Jim Axelrod asked Bolger if he'd done something wrong by signing such prescriptions without interacting with patients. "I couldn't disagree with that," the doctor replied.
The Iowa Board of Medicine began investigating after the CBS report aired. In the settlement reached last week, Bolger agreed not to participate in telemedicine “until he demonstrates that he is able to do so in a safe manner and he receives prior written approval from the board.”
The board said Bolger prescribed medication without properly obtaining a medical history or interviewing the patients. It warned him that if he does so again, he could lose his medical license.
In the CBS story, the doctor also admitted he didn't have a medical license in New York, from which the reporter ordered the medication. Bolger said the Internet company he worked for was only supposed to be sending him records from patients in states in which he is licensed.
"I'm not going to make excuses for what I was doing," Bolger told Axelrod. "It's not that I had bad intentions, it was that I was under the mistaken impression that patients such as yourself were being spoken with by a qualified medical provider — someone who's qualified to screen you, do an intake over the phone, and make sure you were safe to have these meds."
Bolger, who works at an “aesthetics and wellness center” in Davenport, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday. In his agreement with the board, he did not admit to breaking any laws, but said he decided to settle the case to avoid the expense and uncertainty of fighting with regulators.
After the CBS story aired last summer, he released this statement: "I have done everything I can to provide and promote high quality medical care here in the Quad Cities for many years, whether in the emergency room or at the clinic. That includes our military veterans who I've always dropped everything to care for. In looking back, I should have verified my understanding that the patients had been seen by qualified health care providers before I signed those prescriptions. I sincerely regret I did not live up to my own high standards."