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Family practice doctor from Orange is reprimanded by Virginia Board of Medicine committee. Date published: 5/5/2005 By JIM HALL RICHMOND--A Virginia Board of Medicine committee said yesterday that an Orange doctor violated state law when he continued to prescribe narcotics to two patients who abused them. Both patients were hospitalized for drug overdoses and one of them later died of drug poisoning, according to her autopsy. The committee reprimanded Dr. Randolph V. Merrick, 50, of Madison. Its action was the least severe of three possible penalties and does not affect his license or his ability to practice. Merrick declined to comment after the hearing. He has 30 days to appeal the decision to the full board. The committee concluded that Merrick prescribed narcotics for the patients even though he did not definitively diagnose them, and did not monitor their use of the drugs. Both patients signed nonbinding contracts with Merrick, meant to guide their use of the narcotics. Both patients violated their contracts several times, according to the testimony. Merrick told the physicians who heard his case that he held on to the patients too long and should have dismissed them from his practice. "There are lessons I have learned along the way," he said. Merrick is a native of Orange and a fixture in the town. He graduated from Orange's Grymes Memorial School and Woodberry Forest High Schoo,l and today serves as medical director for both schools. He is also the medical director for the county rescue squad and the medical examiner for Orange, Madison and Louisa counties. Merrick's problems with the medical board stem from the way he treated two patients at his office in Orange. He is a family practitioner, employed by the University of Virginia Health Services Foundation at its clinic in the town. The two women--identified as Patient A and Patient B during the hearing--sought help for chronic back pain. One had fallen from a ladder, and the other had unsuccessful back surgery. Merrick supplied one of the patients with narcotic pain killers, including fentanyl, methadone and oxycodone, and with stimulants, such as Adderall and Dexedrine, according to board records. The other patient received Percocet and MS Contin. Merrick treated one of the patients for four years, and the other from 2000 until her death from an overdose in 2002. Patient A was a 30-year-old who first visited Merrick in 1999. He prescribed pain killers, and when the pain medications made her sleepy, he prescribed stimulants.
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