Doctor who quit US post was warned by state
Medical board cited prescriptions
By Andrea Estes, Globe Staff | April 7, 2007
Two months before he resigned from a top federal family planning position, Marblehead gynecologist Eric Keroack received two formal warnings from the Massachusetts board of medicine ordering him to refrain from prescribing drugs to people who are not his patients and from providing mental health counseling without proper training.
Keroack resigned last week as head of the US Office of Population Affairs, which is responsible for providing low-income women with access to contraceptives, after he was notified that the state's Medicaid office had launched an investigation into his private practice. The office, whose investigations generally focus on Medicaid fraud, declined to provide specifics about what it is investigating but confirmed there was a pending case dating back a "few years."
The warnings from the Board of Registration in Medicine stem from a complaint filed in May 2005 by the daughter of one of Keroack's patients, who said he overmedicated her mother, prescribing several powerful psychotherapeutic drugs, and "brainwashed" her into thinking she was "severely depressed."
The daughter, whose name was withheld, also said Keroack gave her parents money and presents, and allegedly issued a fraudulent prescription for the anti depressant Zoloft to her sister -- who had insurance -- when their uninsured mother became unable to pay for the prescription herself.
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President Bush appointed Keroack -- a doctor known for his anti abortion work and advocacy for abstinence programs -- to lead the federal government's family planning efforts in November, triggering an immediate outcry from abortion-rights activists. He had been on the job less than five months when he announced his resignation last week.
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