Doctor turned in fellow physician (NHX)

By Matthew Spolar

Concord Monitor

TITLON — The physician who co-founded Riverfront Medical Group with Susan Hare — the Tilton doctor whose medical license was suspended earlier this month — says she filed the complaint prompting the state investigation into Hare's illegal prescription of pain medication.

"I got their ball rolling," said Kristen Prescott, a pediatrician who once sued Hare and now owns a practice in Belmont. "I made the original complaint."

Hare and the state Board of Medicine reached a settlement last week that suspends her medical license for five years, though she can be reinstated after two years if she complies with the terms of the agreement. Hare has declined to comment on the case.

The board's allegations, which date to 2006, the same year Hare started the practice with Prescott, centered on her dispensing of pain medications such as oxycodone.

Prescott said her original complaint was that nurses were allowed to issue prescriptions in Hare's name. Prescott said that in May 2007 she saw a nurse "tracing Susan's name" onto a prescription for Percocet. "That's when a bell went off that something's not right," Prescott said.

That precise allegation was not included in the board's charges against Hare, though Hare was accused of keeping pre-signed prescriptions in a lockbox so they could be issued when she wasn't around. Penny Taylor, administrator for the board of medicine, said she could not confirm whether Prescott was the original complainant in the case.

Three months after filing the complaint, Prescott left the practice in what she described as a "bad divorce." Prescott filed a lawsuit related to an incident at the office on Aug. 17, 2007, in which she accused her co-workers of causing a Tilton police officer to use "undue and unnecessary force" to take her "into custody."

Prescott said the Riverfront Medical employees told the officer she was "evil" and "dangerous." The Tilton police said they responded to the office because an alarm had gone off, and no one was arrested or charged in the incident.

The lawsuit also stated that Hare had written Prescott and her husband a $78,764 check as part of an arrangement to buy them out of the practice. The Prescotts said the check was then "lost by the United States Post Office" when they tried to mail it to their bank.

The Prescotts accused Hare of refusing to reissue the check, but lawyers from both sides said the matter was eventually settled.

Prescott said she made the complaint about Hare to the Board of Medicine before any of the contentious circumstances surrounding her departure from the practice. "From the time I made the initial complaint, I had not one thing to do with the investigation after that," Prescott said.

Prescott said she raised concerns about Hare's conduct because it was affecting Prescott's ability to carry out her side of the practice. "It was a daily thing that we would have screaming patients in the waiting room demanding their drugs," Prescott said. "I decided that pediatricians and pain medicine didn't mix."

Ultimately, the board's investigation turned up several instances of wrongdoing by Hare, including a failure to change her patients' treatment plans in response to urine samples that came back positive for drugs she had not prescribed, like cocaine. Hare also did not properly respond to reports that her patients had sought prescription drugs elsewhere and wrote new prescriptions for patients before they were due, the board found.

Prescott said she is unhappy with Hare's two-year minimum suspension and feels it is not "harsh enough." Hare must also pay a $5,000 fine in five $1,000 installments, complete a university course on prescription practices and take 24 continuing medical education credits.

"I feel that the medical board was too lenient," Prescott said.