Kentucky doctor who wrote pain-pill prescriptions without exams sentenced to prison
An Eastern Kentucky doctor who took requests for powerful painkillers through Facebook and wrote the prescriptions without examining people has been sentenced to five years in prison.
Scotty R. Akers, 48, of Pikeville, also must forfeit $12,275, according to U.S. Attorney Robert M. Duncan Jr.
U.S. District Judge Robert E. Wier sentenced Aker’s wife, Serissa Akers, 33, to two years and eight months in prison.
Scotty Akers worked at Pikeville Medical Center and Kings Daughters Hospital in Ashland before starting his own clinic, called Pikeville Sports, Spine & Joint Pain Center, LLC, according to court records.
After the clinic closed in 2016, Akers kept writing prescriptions for pain medication to former clinic patients.
Akers or his wife, who had been his office manager, communicated with the people by telephone or Facebook Messenger, and Akers wrote prescriptions for them without conducting exams, he acknowledged in his plea agreement.
Akers or his wife gave people prescriptions at their home or met them in parking lots around town, charging $50 or $75 in some cases, according to the court record.
Even after the Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure began investigating Akers, he wrote prescriptions for nearly 9,000 hydrocodone or oxycodone pills between November 2017 and May 2018, according to the court record.
Akers’ attorney, Philip C. Lawson, said Akers was not motivated by greed, but rather a desire to help patients who would have had a difficult time continuing to get pain medication they needed because of insurance issues or other problems.
Akers felt if he didn’t help the people, there was “a real likelihood that the patients could not receive their medications, potentially leading them to self-medicate with illegal narcotics to address their pain,” Lawson wrote in the sentencing memorandum.
The patients’ treatment had not changed in years, and Akers trusted them not to abuse the medication, the memo said.
Lawson requested a two-year sentence for Akers.
However, prosecutors said Akers failed in his duty to be careful in prescribing the types of drugs that have “ravaged” the region.
“When physicians like Dr. Akers abandon that role and become an easy supply of addictive drugs, it degrades the medical profession, places patients at risk, and exacts a toll on society that lingers for generations,” prosecutors Andrew E. Smith and Dermot Lynch said in a sentencing memorandum.
Akers understood the risks associated with opioid drugs, yet he and Serissa Akers “sold prescriptions for cash, month after month, in retail parking lots and under door mats,” the prosecutors said.
Scotty Akers didn’t keep medical records, took no measures aimed at making sure patients weren’t abusing their pills or selling them illegally, and had no way to check if patients were experiencing complications, the memo said.
