Doctor gets 30 years to life for drug deaths

LOS ANGELES A Southern California doctor was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison on Friday for over-prescribing drugs that caused the fatal overdose of three patients in a murder case capped by the first conviction of its kind in the United States.

“The defendant is responsible in part, no matter what she may state, for the tragic deaths of three men”, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge George G. Lomeli said shortly before imposing the term requested by prosecutors for Hsiu-Ying “Lisa” Tseng.

Tseng regarded such calls as “just FYI” notices and did not perceive them as a problem, her husband, also a doctor, testified in her defense at trial. Among her patients were three convicted drug dealers, two of whom admitted to selling drugs that Tseng prescribed.

Many of Tseng’s patients said they were sometimes high when they saw her but were still able to get prescriptions after they paid in cash, according to the prosecutor.

Tseng, wearing blue jail scrubs, apologized to the victims’ families, her family and “medical society”.

She said she couldn’t imagine what her patients’ families have gone through.

“The doctors in Brooklyn are more likely to give you hydroxyzine [a sedative and anti-histamine also used for hives] for anxiety and Tylenol for pain”, he explained but added, “I think it’s a practical thing because of the patient population”. Her office received more than nine phone calls over three years informing her that former patients had died with drugs in their system.

While the murder conviction against Tseng is apparently without precedent, her prosecution as a doctor-turned-drug dealer is not.

“(She’s) a person who seemingly did not care about the lives of her patients in this case but rather appeared more concerned about distributing risky controlled substances in an assembly line fashion so as to collect payments which amounted to her amassing several million dollars”, Lomeli said.

She said Tseng’s imprisonment “won’t bring any of our children back, but she won’t be hurting any other children, either”. Tseng’s patients often hid addictions to painkillers and Tseng she thought she was helping ease their pain, she said.

Tseng has become the poster-child for over-prescribing in the name of financial gain, a shady practice which has contributed significantly to the epidemic levels of opioid-abuse in the U.S., according to the DEA.

Tseng’s attorney, Tracy Green, asked the court for a sentence of 15 years to life.

“Prescribers see that and they say to themselves and I say to myself, ‘What did she do wrong and could that happen to me?'” McCarberg said. One patient died in her office but was revived.

Tseng’s case is in some ways emblematic of the role so-called dirty doctors play in creating and sustaining addicts, according to law enforcement officials interviewed by CNN.

Tseng prescribed powerful painkillers to her patients, including oxycodone – commonly sold under the brand name Percocet – and hydrocodone, more commonly known by its brand name Vicodin.

Her prescribing habits, Niedermann said, remained unchanged.

The defense attorney said the patients then took “numerous intervening acts that had nothing to do with Lisa Tseng – from going to the pharmacies to get the medication and then taking excessive doses and mixing the medications prescribed by Tseng with other drugs not prescribed by her or alcohol”, leading to their deaths.

April Rovero said she was satisfied with the sentence.