A southern Tennessee doctor again has been given extra time at home before she is sentenced for prescribing pain killers without legitimate medical reason, in some cases for drug seekers who died.
A federal judge delayed a scheduled Monday hearing for Dr. Elizabeth Reimers, of Winchester, to Jan. 7, partly due to a defense motion that said the doctor is being treated for a broken ankle.
while free on bond.
The change of plea hearing was previously delayed in June and again in August after several postponements of scheduled trials.
Reimers’s attorney, Jerry Summers of Chattanooga, did not return a telephone message on Monday seeking comment.
Reimers, whose medical license is suspended, has signed a plea deal that calls for a 70-month sentence. In the agreement, she pleads guilty to three counts of knowingly and intentionally dispensing and causing to be dispensed a controlled substance for no legitimate medical purpose.
Reimers previously pleaded not guilty to a 130-count indictment that charged her with prescribing hydrocodone, Percocet, Xanax, morphine and other drugs for no medical reason. A conviction on all charges in the indictment carried a maximum possible sentence of life in prison.
Winchester police chief Dennis Young previously said there were 13 overdose deaths among Reimers’ patients in 2006 alone. The indictment does not include patients’ names but uses initials of three who died. Young has said those are the strongest cases.
The change of plea hearing was also delayed at Summers’ request to await the outcome of an appeal in an unrelated case that involved federal agents seizing medical records.
The doctor has previously declined comment. Summers said after her arrest that a jury would decide if Reimers made honest mistakes and “whether she had the intent” to harm anyone.
Assistant U.S. Attorney John P. MacCoon said Monday he did not object to the hearing being delayed again. He said cases that involve abuse of prescription medications, some involving doctors, have become more common and for law enforcement “we are hearing it is the biggest problem they are having.”
“You are not dealing with normal doctoring,” MacCoon said. “When (medical) necessity is not even considered, that’s when we feel the need to intervene.”
Reimers’s plea agreement shows the investigation included an undercover agent who obtained a prescription from her. The record says hospital emergency personnel and the medical examiner “had expressed concern to Dr. Reimers regarding her prescriptions. Loved ones of Dr. Reimers’ addicted patients complained to her and asked her to stop prescribing the medications to which they were addicted, only to have Reimers continue to prescribe the same medications.”
Records show the “undercover agent was even able to obtain such prescriptions for his fictional brother (D. Allen) who Dr. Reimers never saw at all, and in whose existence she voiced disbelief.”
Reimers had an unlikely supporter at the time she was charged: Judy Moore, the mother of a patient who died. Moore previously said the doctor was trying to help her pain-riddled son, James Baltimore.
Investigators have said Baltimore was a drug abuser who was treated for an overdose and suicidal thoughts in late 2005. Less than a month later, Baltimore filled new prescriptions from Reimers, including one for 120 tablets of the anti-anxiety drug Xanax. Days later, Baltimore’s wife found him dead. Investigators found 50 Xanax tablets and eight bottles of medication prescribed by Reimers at the scene.
An autopsy showed that Baltimore died of cardiovascular disease with complications from morphine and the active ingredient in Xanax. He also had a prescription for MS Contin, a time-released morphine.
Moore previously said her son abused prescription drugs and his death was “more his fault than hers.”