Suspended physician arrested in drug sting
Boynton physician, 73, charged with unlawful prescription and fraud.
Peter Katz, 73, is charged with unlawful prescription and fraud; he had also been arrested in April.
BOYNTON BEACH — A 73-year-old doctor who was arrested in April and charged with prescribing painkillers for cash and whose medical license was suspended in October was arrested again this week, according to authorities.
Peter Katz, who practices family medicine in Boynton Beach, was arrested Wednesday on charges of unlawful prescription and fraud, among others. The arrest comes after the Florida Department of Health issued an emergency suspension of his license in October and an arrest in April on a charge of unlawful prescription of a controlled substance.
According to Department of Health documents, four of Katz’s patients died of overdoses in his care during a two-year period.
Investigators said Katz was providing prescriptions for urine analysis for sober-home patients. Some sober homes have had their recovering clients submit to expensive urine testing to get reimbursed from health insurance companies and make a profit. The practice known as “patient brokering” — in which drug-treatment centers pay sober homes to steer insured patients to them — has garnered dozens of arrests since 2016 on the local, state and federal levels in an effort to overhaul South Florida’s addiction treatment industry.
The Palm Beach Post exposed the industry in the investigative special section “Heroin: Killer of a Generation.” Stories profiled the industry on a whole and those who lost their lives to heroin-related overdoses.
After he was arrested, Katz admitted to providing the prescriptions for $40 cash per patient to the sober-home managers, although he did not treat the patients. He said he did not own a sober home but had been working with them for years.
On Aug. 7, investigators went undercover to try to obtain prescriptions. While at his Boynton Beach office, Katz allegedly talked about his pending criminal case to the undercover agent and said he didn’t think there was anything wrong with him giving the prescriptions to the sober home residents.
Then on Aug. 10, investigators went undercover again as a sober home manager and a recovery patient. According to the report, Katz gave the agents prescriptions before performing a short exam on one of them — having him stick out his tongue,
inhale and exhale, and then “briefly glanced at his arms.”
Agents again went to Katz’s office on multiple days and conducted the same undercover operation: pose as sober-home managers and patients and obtain prescriptions for urine-analysis tests and other prescription drugs, according to the report.
Investigators also discovered that between February 2015 and February 2016, Katz wrote more than six thousand prescriptions for controlled substances like hydrocodone and oxycodone. For hydrocodone, he wrote 524 prescriptions resulting in 24,392 tablets. The report does not state if those were fraudulent prescriptions or all prescriptions combined in that time frame.
When his license was suspended in October, authorities said Katz’s practice as a medical doctor “constitutes an immediate,seriousdangertothehealth, safety or welfare” of the public, according to Department of Health documents.
In April, investigators said Katz was selling pain medication for cash from his home and after hours at his Boynton Beach office without examinations.
The DEA issued a statement after Katz’s arrest, saying it was “unconscionable”thatadoctor authorized to prescribe drugs to wean addicts off opioids “would be part of the problem and not the solution.”
In April, investigators said Katz was selling pain medication for cash from his home and after hours at his Boynton Beach office without examinations.