Kentucky dentist charged with prescribing pain drug to woman who overdosed and died
A Northern Kentucky dentist improperly prescribed morphine to a patient who overdosed and died, a federal grand jury has charged.
Federal officials announced the indictment against Jay M. Sadrinia, 59, of Villa Hills at a news conference in Cincinnati on Wednesday. Several other criminal cases were announced.
Officials held the news conference to highlight the work of the Appalachian Regional Prescription Opioid Strike Force, designed to crack down on improper prescribing in Kentucky and several other states.
Bad prescribing practices by medical professionals, often driven by greed, put patients at risk and inflame the opioid abuse crisis that leads to tens of thousands of overdose deaths in the U.S. annually, officials said.
“These medical professionals, let me make clear, are operating no different than any drug dealer,” said Kenneth L. Parker, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio.
The 14 cases announced Wednesday included charges against 12 medical professionals in several states.
Two were in Kentucky: Sadrinia and Loey Kousa, a physician in Paintsville.
A grand jury charged Kousa, 59, on April 28 with writing improper prescriptions, billing Medicaid and Medicare for unnecessary tests and creating false records to try to cover the scheme.
Sadrinia was indicted April 21 but the case was initially sealed. He faces four counts of improperly prescribing oxycodone or morphine sulphate and one count of distributing morphine sulphate that led to a death.
A 24-year-old woman overdosed and died after Sadrinia wrote her four opioid prescriptions in a month, three of them in a five-day period, a prosecutor said in a court motion.
A dental expert told federal authorities that in his opinion, Sadrinia’s conduct was “shockingly outside the usual course of professional practice for a dentist,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher M. Jason said in one motion.
Sadrinia, who operates four dental clinics in Northern Kentucky, has pleaded not guilty. His attorney declined to comment for this story.
The charge of improper prescribing leading to a death carries a minimum sentence of 20 years in prison.
One of the other cases announced Wednesday was against Contessa L. Holley, a Tennessee nurse who allegedly used information on hospice patients to get prescriptions for pain pills to “sell and/or use as she deemed fit.”
“The providers charged in this enforcement action saw their patients as customers as profit centers instead of people deserving care,” said Christi Grimm, with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General.
The strike force covers Kentucky, Alabama, Ohio, Virginia, Tennessee and West Virginia. Since it was set up three years ago, agencies in the program have charged 111 people, including dozens of health care professionals who wrote prescriptions for more than 115 million pills, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
This story was originally published May 4, 2022 at 2:12 PM.
