Dive Brief:
- Physician Hsiu-Ying "Lisa" Tseng, 46, received an unprecedented murder conviction in relation to overdose deaths from prescribed drugs. She received a sentence of 30 years to life for three counts of second-degree murder after three of her patients died from drug overdoses, CNN reports.
- Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney John Niedermann stated Tseng is the first physician in the U.S. to be convicted of murder for over-prescribing drugs. There has been a stream of physicians in recent years being prosecuted as drug dealers.
- Tseng reportedly accepted cash payments from young patients who had no medical need for drugs and disregarded pleas from family members worried about their addiction.
Dive Insight:
In 1997, Tseng opened a medical office in Rowland Heights, CA. Over a roughly three year timeframe, nine of Tseng’s patients died, according to the LA DA’s office. During that time, her office took in $5 million.
She has been in custody since March 2012 after federal agents posed undercover. The Drug Enforcement Administration began an investigation into Tseng in 2008 when a pharmacy reported overlapping patients for her office. The DEA reported Tseng wrote more than 27,000 prescriptions over a three-year period, which works out to an average of 25 a day, according to data cited by CBS News.
The murder conviction comes as the U.S. cracks down hard on prescription and illegal opioid misuse, including the heroin addiction that often follows prescription drug addiction.
Just last week, President Obama announced he would seek to budget $1.1 billion to combat opioid misuse in 2017 and the FDA announced a strategic plan for management of opioid medications. Healthcare providers are viewed as a major contributor to the epidemic, as Healthcare Dive has reported, based on statistics including a 300% increase in U.S. prescription opioid sales since 1999 despite a steady number of people self-reporting pain.
Niedermann wrote that part of the reason murder charges were warranted in Tseng's case was because she had already been notified about three previous patient overdose deaths. According to testimony from her husband, also a physician, Tseng "did not perceive them as a problem," CNN reports.