Judge reverses some of doctor’s penalties

Board’s witness not valid, he rules

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

A judge in Pulaski County Circuit Court has reversed some of the Arkansas State Medical Board’s sanctions against a Little Rock doctor who had been fined almost $15,000 and had his medical license suspended for almost a year.

Circuit Judge Jay Moody notified the attorneys for Dr. William Sydney Warren Jr., 58, and the board Friday of his findings. The case will be returned to the board to comply with Moody’s ruling and provide additional information he requested.

In the two-page notice, which followed a Jan. 28 hearing, the judge overturned findings by the board that Warren, operating a pain-management clinic, had wrongly prescribed some medications, ruling that regulators had reprimanded the doctor based on insufficient evidence.

Moody ruled the board did not meet the required legal standard to determine whether Warren had violated the state’s prescription laws because the agency’s expert witness was not a full-time active-practice physician in direct patient care, which is what the law requires.

The board’s expert witness was unqualified, Warren’s attorney Drake Mann had argued in court filings.

In a similar finding that regulators acted without sufficient evidence, Moody also reversed the board’s finding that Warren had violated Board Regulation 33 involving moving his practice without giving the board appropriate notice.

Moody remanded the case back to the board for regulators to supply more information about how much they had fined Warren after determining he had violated Regulation 2.4 by overprescribing medication for his patients and Regulation 19, which governs record-keeping at a pain-management clinic. The board’s decision is not clear on how much Warren was fined for violations relating to those regulations, the judge wrote.

The board had already acknowledged that it also acted without sufficient evidence in sanctioning Warren over an accusation he had violated Regulation 2.6, a record-keeping requirement for prescribing pain medication to patients for more than six months.

Warren, who’s been licensed to practice medicine since 1982, had his medical license suspended in November 2012 ahead of a June 2013 hearing in which the board agreed to lift the suspension once he completed courses in prescribing controlled substances, record-keeping and maintaining appropriate boundaries with patients. He was also fined $9,000, representing 18 rule violations at $500 per occurrence, and ordered to repay $5,895, the board’s expenses for his investigation.

Warren stated he fulfilled his training obligations by August 2013 but that the board would not allow him to present proof of training until October 2013.

Warren filed suit in Circuit Court in July 2013 to appeal the board’s findings that he had violated the state’s Medical Practices Act. The accusations wrongly stained an “otherwise immaculate disciplinary history” that included 27 years as an anesthesiologist, Warren stated in a court filing. He blamed the accusations on a vendetta by a former employer who was angry that Warren had gone into competition with him.

The board listed 17 patients who had been “excessively” prescribed by Warren, some of whom were being treated for drug addiction, for whom he had not maintained the required records justifying his treatment.

Arkansas, Pages 10 on 02/04/2014