‘Drug dealer with a medical license’ gets 50 months in prison

A Simpson County doctor has been sentenced to four years and two months in federal prison after being convicted of 15 counts of improper prescribing to patients who died of overdoses. Roy D. Reynolds, 69, was also fined $25,000.

Reynolds practiced for more than 30 years in Franklin “before closing his office in 2015 while under investigation,” Bill Estep reports for the Lexington Herald-Leader. “Attorneys for Reynolds described him in court documents as a pillar of the community, a family man and Christian who pushed for improvements in local medical care and devoted his career to serving patients. Prosecutors, however, said Reynolds doled out prescriptions for painkillers called opioids, and for anti-anxiety drugs, to patients despite red flags about possible abuse,” such as knowledge that his patients were doctor-shopping for drugs. They said one patient overdosed five times but care but Reynolds giving her prescriptions.

Reynolds prescribed 139,667 oxycodone pills in 2012. The second most by a primary-care doctor in the county was 11,794. Reynolds “became a drug dealer with a medical license,” Russell Coleman, U.S. attorney for the western half of Kentucky, said in a news release.