Ex-HHS family planning head Keroack warned by Mass. medical board

[Eugene]

Source: Boston Globe

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.

-snip-

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.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/04/07/doctor_who_quit_us_post_was_warned_by_state

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The article notes that the board's ethics warning was not a disciplinary action.

Related: HHS Official Quits After Medicaid Action - AP