2 doctors with felony records back to practicing medicine

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Missouri's top health official is raising questions about a regulatory board restoring two doctors' licenses to practice medicine despite their felony records and misuse of prescription drugs.

Randall Williams, director of the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, said the Missouri Board of Registration for the Healing Arts' decision to relicense Michael Impey and Charles Sutherland is part of a larger pattern of physician drug abuse.

He said he and Gov. Eric Greitens are examining the problem as they try to fight the state's opioid epidemic, The Kansas City Star reported.

"We've been looking very closely at the (board of) Healing Arts record on that issue," Williams said. "You've tapped into an area that is very much of concern to us, and we've been doing a lot of due diligence on that."

The board's decision allows both doctors to practice anywhere in Missouri, though they will have several restrictions placed on their licenses, including being denied a registration number pharmacies require to fill prescriptions for controlled substances.

Connie Clarkston, the board's executive director, said the group's deliberations are closed.

Impey, a St. Louis doctor, got his license back despite a felony conviction for illegally distributing controlled substances and despite his lawyer saying during a 2009 malpractice suit Impey was addicted to pain pills.

A message The Kansas City Star left at Impey's new office at the Volarich Medical Group in St. Louis was not returned, and he declined to comment to The Associated Press through an office worker.

Sutherland, who used to run a clinic in Paris, Missouri, had an arrest for driving while intoxicated in 2003 and a felony conviction for forging prescriptions, including some for opioids, in 2010.

Sutherland was put on probation after the forgery conviction, then violated that probation and was sentenced to 120 days in prison after he was convicted of criminal damage to property in 2012.

Sutherland doesn't have a listed number and has no practice location listed with the medical board.

Nicole Volkert, who was the prosecuting attorney in Monroe County during Sutherland's forgery case, said she was surprised to hear he was getting his license back.

"When he was practicing medicine, Dr. Sutherland contributed to the misuse of opioids in this community," said Volkert, who is an assistant city attorney for the city of Columbia. "In my opinion, I don't think he should have gotten his medical license back."