Based on the report received by Valvira, the doctor from Oulu had prescribed drugs suitable for abuse to his patients repeatedly and in large quantities with incomplete patient labels.
Outrageous last year, the right to practice medicine of a doctor suspected of a narcotics crime and a drug crime was temporarily restricted by Valvira’s decision.
The Oulu police said last week that a doctor from Oulu is suspected of signing a large number of unjustified prescriptions over the course of a year and a half.
According to the police release, the doctor would have signed prescriptions for drugs affecting the central nervous system and narcotic drugs for several people between January 2021 and July 2022.
The doctor is also suspected of taking shares of the medicines as payment for writing prescriptions for himself and of knowing when writing the prescriptions that the medicines would be sold on.
The police suspect that the doctor asked others to sell medicines and thus benefited financially from the sale of medicines.
of HS according to the information, the doctor suspected of crimes is a 45-year-old woman.
In recent years, the doctor has worked for two companies providing health services. He held receptions for patients largely remotely. The employment relationship with both companies has since ended.
Valvira made a report on practicing medicine and, based on the report, temporarily limited his right to practice last year. It is not clear from the partially classified decision which party informed Valvira about the doctor. In the summer of the same year, the police started investigating the case.
The doctor’s right to practice his profession was temporarily limited so that he may act as a doctor only in a service relationship in the public sector under the management and supervision of another licensed doctor. Valvira considered that a doctor acting independently in the medical profession was apt to endanger patient safety.
The temporary restriction of the right to practice a profession is valid while the matter is being investigated, until next year at most.
Temporary while the restriction is in effect, the doctor does not have the right to order drugs that affect the central nervous system, drugs containing pregabalin or narcotic drugs to be delivered from the pharmacy.
According to Valvira, a total of 36 patients had used a doctor’s prescription for this kind of medicine from the pharmacy during the four months of 2021-2022.
Valvira based on the report he received, the doctor had prescribed drugs suitable for abuse repeatedly and long-term, often mostly based on the patient’s own wishes.
For some of the patients, he prescribed, among other things, opioid painkillers that affect the central nervous system and various drugs belonging to the benzodiazepines, several hundreds of tablets.
Based on the list of medicines detailed in Valvira’s decision, the doctor had, for example, prescribed more than ten different prescription medicines in the course of four months, several of which are known to be addictive and also commonly abused for the purpose of intoxication. In the prescriptions assigned to the person, the total number of tablets of different medicines was more than 4,300.
The doctor justified the medications he prescribed by, among other things, the medical needs of the treatment and said that he also treated by, for example, talking and giving support. The doctor’s own more detailed explanation of his activities is concealed in the decision.
Valvira stated in his decision that based on the report he received from the doctor, the patient document entries he made were incomplete. They did not contain enough necessary information to ensure the planning, implementation and monitoring of patient care.
According to Valvira, the documents lacked entries on, among other things, the diagnosis, the medical basis of medication and the monitoring of medical treatment.
Based on the information received by Valvira, the doctor did not sufficiently investigate the patients’ background information, carry out comprehensive examinations at their offices, or properly monitor drug responses and side effects.
Valvira considered that by prescribing drugs suitable for abuse, he would have neglected the special care and caution required for prescribing drugs.
Because the markings were incomplete, it was difficult to assess the appropriateness of the medical treatment prescribed by the doctor, and the goal of the given treatment was not always clear from the patient documents, Valvira stated.
Police started an investigation related to the doctor in the summer of 2022 and last week transferred the completed preliminary investigation to the prosecutor for consideration of charges. In a press release, the police described the entire preliminary investigation as “quite extensive and exceptional.”
Regarding the doctor’s actions, the police investigated the case as a suspected aggravated narcotics crime and drug crime. In addition to the doctor, the police suspect one person of a serious drug crime and several other people of drug crime and drug crimes.
According to HS information, the woman was imprisoned on suspicion of a serious drug crime from July to November of last year.
The woman’s legal assistant previously refused to comment on the suspected crime to HS.
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