Greensburg doctor gets nearly 5 years in prison for painkiller scheme

A former Greensburg doctor who pleaded guilty to health care fraud and conspiracy for illegally prescribing a potent painkiller will serve nearly five years in prison.

Thomas Whitten, 71, pleaded guilty in July to taking kickbacks from Insys Therapeutics, a pharmaceutical company that makes Subsys, a painkiller 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine that is to be used only for breakthrough pain in cancer patients.

He was sentenced on Tuesday in Pittsburgh by U.S. District Judge William S. Stickman IV.

The prosecution said Insys launched what it called a speaker program that purported to teach other practitioners about Subsys. In reality, the government said, the speaker series was really just a way to pay kickbacks to doctors who prescribed Subsys. Whitten participated in that program, prescribing Subsys to patients who did not need it and, in return, received $118,000 in kickbacks.

At most of the speaker programs, the government said, it was simply Whitten being paid to take his friends out to dinner. Attendance sign-in sheets were frequently forged by adding the names of medical practitioners who weren’t present.

The prescriptions Whitten wrote cost Medicare more than $3.8 million and cost Highmark more than $3.2 million, the prosecution said.

“He chose to use his position of power to distribute illegitimate opioid narcotics in exchange for unlawful kickbacks,” the government wrote in a court document.

“(Whitten) was not motivated by the best interests of his patients but by greed,” the government added. “Put another way, the defendant was willing to put his patients’ lives at risk by prescribing high doses of a dangerous fentanyl product in exchange for money and other benefits.”

The government said that Whitten also allowed his Drug Enforcement Administration registration numbers to be used by five weight-loss clinics to write prescriptions for other drugs, even though he was not seeing the patients. In exchange, Whitten was paid $4,000 a month over a two-year period.

“He was not concerned about his patients’ health or well-being. He cared only about making money,” the government wrote.

Whitten’s attorney, Patrick Thomassey, argued that his client should be sentenced to home confinement with community service. Thomassey cited a number of letters written on Whitten’s behalf, including patients who credited him with being a caring physician.

“Dr. Whitten and his staff saved my life,” one patient wrote. “Dr. Whitten was one of the few doctors left that put the patient ahead of pushing patients out the door to get the next one in. Patients were people to him, not just a paycheck.”

In addition to his federal prison term, Whitten also must pay more than $8 million in restitution and forfeit his medical license and DEA registration.