An Ooltewah doctor has surrendered his medical license after Tennessee investigators found that he worked with an online company to illegally prescribe and distribute narcotic drugs like oxycodone, morphine and Xanax to Tennessee patients without seeing those patients in person.
Starting in 2010, family practitioner Robert Alan Coles collaborated with a Texas-based business called Central Medical Consults to prescribe the medications through an online business, records from the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners show.
The owner of Central Medical Consults, Jeff Hall, has no medical training, and the company is not a licensed clinic in Tennessee. Officials said Hall "found patients via the Internet, took their information, and referred the patients to [Coles] for an initial visit."
For about a year, Coles "engaged in a pattern of writing refills of controlled substances for the CMC patients without seeing the patient in person or communicating directly with the patient," the order states. Coles helped provide medication for about 27 people without providing proper medical justification, the state order says.
Coles would prescribe the drugs based solely on telephone conversations or electronic information supplied by Hall. Hall then paid the doctor for each "tele-consultation." Eventually, the doctor made a stamp of his signature for Hall, who could then write and sign prescriptions under Coles' name.
The accusations are laid out in a state order that Coles signed, which means he "is admitting to most of the facts, though not all of them are true," Coles' attorney William G. Schwall said.
"He was just not up for a trial," Schwall said Wednesday. "He saw and treated every patient. The problem is that he was using a referral service. He did not have a traditional medical practice, and the [regulators] don't like that."
During the state's investigation, officials also found that Coles fraudulently prescribed drugs to his wife, providing her access to a wide range of drugs -- including hydrocodone, oxycodone, Adderall, Ambien and lithium -- without ever showing proof of medical necessity.
"Some of these medications were intended for [Coles'] wife; some were intended for [Coles'] personal use," the order states. Coles continued to prescribe his wife the drugs "even though he was aware of her history of alcohol abuse and after he became aware that she was misusing prescription drugs."
Schwall insisted that neither Coles nor his wife took the drugs inappropriately.
"The only drugs he ever prescribed for himself -- it was medicine that he had been prescribed for years," Schwall said. "It wasn't narcotics. He was just keeping up his own medication. [His wife] was not addicted to any medications whatsoever. She had medical issues, and they couldn't afford to go to another doctor."
Along with surrendering his medical license, Coles was fined $31,000, and has been ordered to pay an additional $25,000 to cover the cost of the investigation. Meanwhile, Coles' Georgia medical license expired while he was under investigation there for the operation of an unlicensed pain management clinic, state records show.
Contact staff writer Kate Belz at kbelz@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6673.