What Happened
Jessica Friday, an advanced practice nurse practitioner from Appleton, Wisconsin, was sentenced December 18, 2025 to 16 months in federal prison for distributing controlled substances outside the usual course of professional practice. Between 2020 and 2024, Friday prescribed opioids including oxycodone to patients without medical necessity, under an arrangement where patients filled the prescriptions and gave her half or more of the pills for her own use.
On August 13, 2025, Jessica Friday pleaded guilty to one count of distribution of controlled substances outside the usual course of professional practice and without a legitimate purpose. According to court records, between 2020 and 2024, Friday issued opioid prescriptions, including oxycodone, without a demonstrated medical necessity, under an arrangement in which patients agreed to fill the prescriptions and give her half or more of the pills for her personal use. Friday knew the patients did not medically need the opioids, that they were vulnerable due to mental health and addiction issues, and that some of them were selling the pills they kept. On December 18, 2025, U.S. District Judge J.P. Stadtmueller sentenced her to 16 months in federal prison and three years of supervised release.
What Went Wrong
- A prescriber exploited independent prescribing authority to generate opioid supply for herself by using vulnerable patients as intermediaries, rather than diverting from a facility's own drug stock.
- The scheme ran for roughly four years (2020–2024) before prosecution, during which prescribing-pattern review apparently did not flag the arrangement.
- Patients with documented mental health and addiction vulnerabilities were specifically recruited into the scheme, compounding the harm beyond the prescriber's own misuse.
How It Could Have Been Prevented
- Monitor prescribers for patient panels with unusually high concentrations of vulnerable or addiction-history patients receiving high-dose opioid prescriptions.
- Cross-reference PMP data for patterns where the same prescriber's patients disproportionately fill identical high-quantity opioid prescriptions.
- Require independent second-provider review for any advanced practice prescriber whose opioid prescribing volume or patient-vulnerability profile is a statistical outlier among peers.