What Happened

A dentist practicing in Mauston, Wisconsin wrote an oxycodone prescription in the name of his own dental hygienist so she could fill it and hand the pills over to him for his personal use.

According to the plea agreement, the dentist wrote the prescription in August 2017, asked his hygienist to fill it, and reimbursed her for the insurance co-pay once she turned the oxycodone over to him. The hygienist later cooperated with a DEA investigation into the scheme.

He pleaded guilty on March 12, 2020, in federal court in Madison to obtaining oxycodone by misrepresentation, fraud, and deception, with sentencing scheduled for May 2020.

What Went Wrong

  • A prescriber used an employee as a proxy patient. The hygienist had no legitimate medical need for oxycodone, yet the prescription was filled without question because it came from a licensed prescriber for a named patient.
  • No independent check flagged a prescriber writing for a subordinate employee. Prescriptions written by an employer for an employee create an obvious conflict of interest that went unexamined until an employee came forward.
  • The scheme relied entirely on the hygienist's silence. There was no institutional control — insurance review, pharmacy flag, or practice oversight — independent of the employee's willingness to report it.

How It Could Have Been Prevented

  • Prohibit prescribers from writing controlled-substance prescriptions for their own employees, and flag such prescriptions for pharmacy-side review.
  • Encourage confidential reporting channels so staff pressured into filling a supervisor's prescriptions have a safe way to disclose it early.
  • Have pharmacies flag and verify controlled-substance prescriptions where the prescriber and patient share an employer or workplace address.
  • Include prescriber-employee conflicts of interest in practice-level compliance training for small medical and dental offices.

Related Guidance

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