Public Health

State Revokes Roland Clinic Doctor’s Prescribing License

By |
Print More

Anny Sivilay/Sequoyah County Times

The Wellness Clinic in Roland, Okla., where Dr. Ronald V. Myers Sr. has practiced, came under scrutiny by state narcotics and medical-board officials.

The Wellness Clinic in Roland, Okla., where Dr. Ronald V. Myers Sr. has practiced, came under scrutiny by state narcotics and medical-board officials.

Anny Sivilay / Sequoyah County Times

The Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs has revoked the narcotic prescribing license of Dr. Ronald V. Myers Sr., a physician in Roland, Oklahoma, who prescribed 4.6 million dosage units of addictive drugs over an 18-month period in 2013 and 2014.

In a document filed Thursday, the bureau said Myers’ record as medical director of the Wellness Clinic in Roland provided “clear and convincing evidence” of multiple instances of overprescribing activity.

The revocation of his prescribing license will take effect May 2 and remain in effect for one year. The bureau’s final order also directed Myers to pay a $25,000 administrative fine and says he cannot reapply for a prescribing license if he fails to pay the fine.

Reached by telephone at home Saturday, Myers called the bureau’s administrative action discriminatory and said he had no intention of continuing to practice medicine in Oklahoma. He said he planned to file a legal appeal of the order to “clear my name.”

“It’s a travesty of justice because I’m being held accountable for the irresponsible actions of other physicians who were practicing at the same clinic,” Myers said.

Sign up for a weekly newsletter from Oklahoma Watch

“I have no desire to practice medicine in Oklahoma ever again. It is one of the most racist states that I have practiced medicine in my life,” Myers said. “In my opinion this a continuation of their discriminative practices against what I’m doing for chronic pain patients as an African-American physician.”

Myers said his high prescribing count was attributable to the fact that he took on patients who had been overprescribed by other doctors at the Wellness Clinic.

“Of course my numbers are high,” he said.  “You got an irresponsible doctor giving out 30 or 40 oxycodones a month … In order to care for the patients, instead of kicking them to the curb, I took three to four to five months to wean them down. Now how is that being irresponsible?” (Oxycodone  is a an addictive opiate painkiller.)

In its final order, the bureau described the testimony of numerous witnesses at a January administrative hearing during which Myers declined to testify in his own defense.

One witness, former clinic patient Tammy Tanksley, said she started going to the Wellness Clinic because her husband’s brother told her “she could get what she wanted” there.

Dr. Ronald V. Myers Sr.

Anny Sivilay / Sequoyah County Times

Dr. Ronald V. Myers Sr.

Tanksley said she received multiple prescriptions for OxyContin and Xanax there. (OxyContin is a brand name for oxycodone. Xanax is the brand name for alprazolam, an addictive anti-anxiety drug.) Tanksley said she would spend $1,400 in cash every month for her prescriptions, then triple that amount by selling what she didn’t use herself. She said Myers signed all of her prescriptions from July 23, 2013, to Jan. 1, 2014, and that no doctor ever gave her a physical exam.

Dr. Richard Brittingham, a Lawton physician who was hired by the narcotics bureau as an expert witness to review the Wellness Clinic’s activity, testified that the doctors there “were practicing substandard medicine and were using the term ‘pain clinic’ as their title, but ‘pill mill’ would be more appropriate.”

Contacted Saturday, narcotics bureau spokesman Mark Woodward said the bureau’s findings spoke for themselves and offered no additional comment.

A previous investigation by Oklahoma Watch and The Oklahoman presented in detail prescribing activities at the Wellness Clinic.

Oklahoma Watch also covered the January hearing leading to Myers’ license revocation.

Reach reporter Warren Vieth at wvieth@oklahomawatch.org.

Donate Today



Support the only statewide investigative reporting publication in Oklahoma. Your contributions to Oklahoma Watch are tax-deductible and will help sustain efforts to produce high-quality, in-depth reports on the most pressing issues facing the state.