A Miami doctor ignored $20K fine in 2021 for ‘excessive’ pill prescribing, state says
Getting fined $20,000 plus $12,806 in case costs after being caught prescribing “inappropriate and/or excessive quantities” of controlled substances didn’t cost Miami Dr. Peter Sanchez anything, the Florida Department of Health says in a recent complaint.
Sanchez, the administrative complaint says, didn’t pay the fines or show that he did the time in continuing medical education classes. Along with an official reprimand, those were the agreed upon punishments in the settlement agreement approved by the state Board of Medicine on June 11, 2021. All obligations were to be handled by June 11, 2022, a year after the board’s final order.
Instead, the July 31 filing says Sanchez, “did not pay the fine or the costs and did not submit documentation of completion of the CME in risk management within one year from the date the final order was filed.”
In 2021, officially for his discipline case, Sanchez neither admitted nor denied what the Florida Department of Health alleged in its complaint about Sanchez’s actions at All Care Family Health in Boca Raton and Lake Worth. For the Department of Health’s part, it agrees that the settlement “shall not constitute a finding of guilty for any purposes other than the resolution” of the case.
Sanchez “provides services” at Douglas Gardens’ North Miami and Miami Beach locations, Douglas Gardens CEO Eleanor Lanser confirmed in a May email to the Herald.
Since the complaint, Sanchez returned neither an email nor phone messages left for him a Douglas Gardens Community Mental Health Center from a Miami Herald reporter.
READ MORE: A Miami doctor kept ‘inappropriately’ prescribing pain and anxiety pills, state says
Sanchez at All Care Family Health
The accusations that got Sanchez fined go back to 2011 through 2013 and All Care Family Health in Palm Beach County. That complaint named five patients to whom Sanchez prescribed high quantities such medications as Xanax, oxycodone, methadone, Valium and other drugs without documented reason via exams or medical history.
One patient did have a documented history of drug abuse and depression, the complaint said, yet Sanchez “inappropriately prescribed or prescribed inappropriate and/or excessive quantities of” Valium, oxycodone and Dilaudid, the brand name for pain medicine hydromorphone.
And, the complaint said, he did so without for diagnoses not supported by documented exams or test results supporting his diagnosis, referring the patient to counseling for his drug abuse and mental health issues or considering “less addictive medications.”
