A federal grand jury in New Orleans, Louisiana, returned an indictment Friday charging a Louisiana physician for his role in distributing over 1,200,000 doses of Schedule II controlled substances, according to officials.
The drugs included oxycodone and morphine,
The illegal dispensing of drugs was done outside the scope of professional practice and not for a legitimate medical purpose, and for maintaining his clinic for the purpose of illegally distributing controlled substances, according to authorities.
Friday’s indictment also charges the physician with defrauding health care benefit programs, including Medicare, Medicaid, and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana, of more than $5,100,000, given that the opioid prescriptions were filled using health insurance benefits.
He faces up to 10 years for conspiracy to commit health care fraud and 20 years each for all other counts. Talbot is presumed innocent unless proven guilty.
According to court documents, Adrian Dexter Talbot, M.D., 55, of Slidell, owned and operated a medical clinic located in Slidell that accepted cash payments from individuals seeking prescriptions for Schedule II controlled substances. In 2015, Talbot took a full-time job in Pineville, Louisiana.
Although he was no longer physically present at the Slidell clinic, he pre-signed prescriptions to be distributed to individuals there without seeing or examining those individuals.
In 2016, Talbot hired another practitioner who also pre-signed prescriptions to be distributed in the same manner at the Slidell clinic.
With Talbot’s knowledge, individuals were filling their prescriptions that were issued outside the scope of professional practice and not for a legitimate medical purpose using their insurance benefits, thereby causing health care benefit programs to be fraudulently billed for filling prescriptions that were written without an appropriate patient examination or determination of medical necessity for the prescription.