Doctor who resigned from family planning post was cited by state
BOSTON --A Marblehead doctor who abruptly resigned last week from a federal family planning post was warned by state officials in January not to prescribe drugs to people who weren't his patients or provide mental health counseling without proper training, according to a published report.
Eric Keroack resigned March 29 as head of the U.S. Office of Population Affairs after he was notified that the state's Medicaid office had launched an investigation into his private practice. The U.S. Office of Population Affairs, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services agency, provides low-income women with contraception.
The state Medicaid office provided no specifics of its investigation into Keroack, but confirmed there was a pending case dating back a few years.
The Jan. 10 warnings to Keroack from the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine stem from a complaint filed in May 2005 by the daughter of one of Keroack's patients, The Boston Globe reported.
The complaint alleged Keroack overmedicated her mother by prescribing several powerful psychotherapeutic drugs, and "brainwashed" her mother into thinking she was severely depressed. The daughter, a former patient of Keroack's whose name was withheld, also said Keroack gave her parents money and presents, including a Cape Cod getaway.
The woman charged that Keroack issued a fraudulent prescription for the antidepressant Zoloft to her sister, who had insurance, when her uninsured mother became unable to pay for it.
She was also upset about a letter Keroack wrote her, using exclamation points and all-capitalized sentences, in which he urged to make up with her mother "before it's too late to fix it."
In his 13-page response to the board, Keroack called the allegations "patently false."
He acknowledged switching the prescription, saying he'd given the complainant's sister several free samples of Zoloft. With the prescription in hand, the sister would then be able to pass the samples on to his patient, her mother. He said it was like killing two birds with one stone.
He also said he'd given money and gifts to the patient, but denied overstepping the patient-doctor boundary.
"I am guilty of being generous to a fault in the care of this couple and their family," said Keroack.
"It seems that being aware of the dynamics in a family that I have taken care of for over 12 years has somehow been interpreted to be atypical, abnormal, and a violation of boundaries," he wrote the board.
Keroack's appointment by President Bush angered Planned Parenthood and other groups that support abortion rights, which viewed him as opposed to birth control and comprehensive sex education. Keroack had worked for an organization that opposes contraception.
