Greensburg doctor pleads guilty to taking kickbacks over fentanyl spray
A Greensburg doctor pleaded guilty in federal court Thursday to taking kickbacks, health care fraud and conspiring to distribute controlled substances.
Thomas Whitten, 71, will be sentenced by U.S. District Judge William S. Stickman IV on Dec. 7.
According to prosecutors, Whitten received kickbacks from Arizona-based Insys Therapeutics from May 2013 to November 2015 in exchange for prescribing Subsys, a powerful opioid containing fentanyl. Subsys, which is a liquid that gets sprayed under a patient’s tongue, is only approved for the “management of breakthrough pain in cancer patients” who have developed a tolerance to other pain killers.
However, investigators said Whitten prescribed the drug to patients for whom it was not medically necessary and, therefore, it was not eligible for insurance reimbursement.
Whitten also pleaded guilty to conspiring to distribute phentermine hyrocholoride and diethlpropion to patients at five weight-loss clinics from November 2017 to December 2019.
Whitten ran Westmoreland Pain Management since 2006.
According to the Pennsylvania Department of State, Whitten’s medical license was suspended on Feb. 5, 2020, following the filing of the federal charges against him.
Insys founder, John Kapoor, was ordered to serve more than five years in prison in January 2020 for his role in the scheme to bribe doctors to prescribe Subsys, the New York Times reported. Kapoor and four other company executives have appealed their convictions, according to Reuters.
Paula Reed Ward is a TribLive reporter covering federal and Allegheny County courts. She joined the Trib in 2020 after spending nearly 17 years at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where she was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team. She is the author of "Death by Cyanide." She can be reached at pward@triblive.com.
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