The Pain Relief Network

Eight years after he was arrested on suspicion of killing patients with pain medicine — then exonerated of the charges — a former Anderson doctor has opened a new practice in southern Humboldt County.

But this time, Dr. Frank Fisher won't prescribe any controlled substances, he said. Although he is permitted, doing so is too risky both to his career and his freedom.

"I don't have a death wish," said Fisher, 54, now of Rio Dell.

Although he still feels strongly that pain remains undertreated in America, Fisher knows firsthand how dangerous prescribing opiates for it can be for doctors.

He's been prosecuted criminally for murder, civilly for wrongful deaths, and administratively through the state medical board, which could have revoked his license to practice.

"I call it triple jeopardy. That's why doctors won't treat this kind of illness," Fisher said of chronic pain.

It took Fisher five years to win the criminal acquittal, then a year to settle the medical board's case and still another year to meet its conditions. Those included an intense psychiatric evaluation and medical training. He also was acquitted of Medi-Cal fraud.

For the past few years, Fisher has testified in state, federal and medical board hearings, served as an analyst and expert witness in other medical proceedings and written peer review articles for medical journals.

Now he's ready to get back to practicing general medicine and treating patients, especially the indigent.

He held a grand opening Friday for the Eel Valley Rural Health Clinic in Rio Dell.

The nonprofit office will serve a community of about 3,000 people in Rio Dell, where there is no full-time physician. The nearest town's doctor doesn't accept Medi-Cal patients, as Fisher plans to. He hopes to provide a mental health and dental program, too.

"The idea is to develop a full-service community clinic like I had before," Fisher said of his former practice in Anderson, where about 80 percent of his clients were on Medi-Cal.

At Eel Valley, he's working alongside fellow physician Eileen Moy and Fisher's nurse practitioner from eight years ago, William Stephens, he said.

Fisher considered opening again in Shasta County, but heard rumors that the families of former patients who died want to kill him, he said.

"You have to take that sort of thing seriously," he said. "Apparently, they don't have any faith in the judicial process, which exonerated me both criminally and civilly."

Fisher said he doesn't expect to see any of his old Shasta County patients in the Rio Dell office, only because he won't provide them with the more serious drugs he once did, such as oxycodone.

"If I were going to prescribe controlled substances, there wouldn't be any doubt — the cars would stretch from here to Redding," he said.

Instead, it's rare for patients to find a physician who will adequately treat their pain, Fisher said. Like him, doctors fear prosecution and prison.

That's a failure of both the judicial and medical systems, he said.

"When you go to your doctor with chronic pain, he doesn't put your interests first. He puts his interests first," Fisher said. "And that's not the practice of medicine."

http://www.redding.com/news/2007/
jul/22/doctor-starts-anew-in-rio-dell/