STORY TOOLS

• E-mail story
• iPod friendly
• Printer friendly

Tell us about it

• What would you add to this story? Tell us what we missed.
• Do you have photos from this event? Documents we need to see? Share with us.
• Upload photos & videos
• More ways to get your stuff online and in the paper.

More All

• It’s Christmastime at Palm Cottage
• Great Depression unlike today’s troubling times
• You Review Movie: John Augustine

Share and Enjoy [?]

A physician formerly employed at the Ruth Cooper Center in Fort Myers has been placed on probation by state authorities for violating practice standards when he prescribed pain killers inappropriately to two employees and to minor children of one of the employees without examining or maintaining medical records of the individuals, according to state records.

Dr. Jose Miguel Santeiro, who lives in Miami Lakes, was placed on probation for one year and ordered to pay a $20,000 fine, among other disciplinary action handed down by the state Board of Medicine last month.

Santeiro resigned from the mental health center on May 19, 2005 shortly after he was confronted by the center’s management about his prescriptions to the employees.

“(He) minimized the number of prescriptions written and rationalized his action by saying all of the doctors at the Center were doing it,” according to state records.

David Winters, acting chief executive officer of the nonprofit center, said Santeiro’s claim, made two weeks before his resignation, led to a policy change that prohibits the center’s physicians from prescribing medications to employees unless the employees are being treated at the center.

At the time, administrators found one other physician was prescribing to an employee, Winters said.

“But I don’t think it was to the extent (as Santeiro),” Winters said.

He said the second physician had prescribed an antibiotic to an employee and was told to stop.

Santeiro began working for Ruth Cooper at its Ortiz Avenue office in March 2002 and later was appointed acting medical director, a position he held for one year until he returned to working at the crisis unit. Winters said the center had no problems with him when he worked in the crisis unit.

After resigning in mid-May 2005, Santeiro went to work for the David Lawrence mental health center in Collier County as a psychiatrist in an outpatient setting in both Immokalee and Naples, said Trista Meister, spokeswoman for David Lawrence.

“While he was employed with us, his license was active and unencumbered and he passed all background screening,” she said.

David Lawrence officials were not aware the state had begun investigating Santeiro, she said.

“The investigation didn’t begin until after he had started working with us,” she said.

The state filed its complaint against him this past February and he signed a settlement agreement March 30 under which he did not admit or deny fault. Terms of the settlement agreement, similar to a plea bargain in a criminal case, were accepted by the state medical board at its June 3 meeting in Orlando.

Meister said Santeiro resigned of his own volition in late June.

“He just quit. He took a job in Miami,” she said.

Winters, of Ruth Cooper, believes the two employees involved in Santeiro’s discipline case with the state, who are identified in state records by their initials, no longer are working at Ruth Cooper. They would have faced discipline for receiving prescriptions written on Ruth Cooper prescription pads by Santeiro but not have been terminated because the center’s policy is treatment-focused and not punitive, he said.

Winters said the center was tipped off by a pharmacy that something was going on with Santeiro’s prescriptions.

During a 14-month period beginning in March 2004, Santeiro wrote 10 prescriptions for codeine totaling 630 tablets to one of the employees, according to the state. He also wrote eight prescriptions for oxycodone, totaling 566 tablets, and three prescriptions for hydrocodone, totaling 240 tablets, the state documents say.

All three medications are controlled substances that can lead to dependency; the opiate-based oxycodone has been particularly troublesome for drug enforcement agencies battling street dealing of the pills. Physicians in Florida and elsewhere have had their licenses revoked for overprescribing.

In March 2005, Santeiro wrote a prescription for hydrocodone to the employee’s minor child. Two months later on the same day, he wrote another prescription for hydrocodone to the same minor and a separate prescription to a sibling for the same painkiller, state records show. The amount of the prescriptions was not disclosed.

Regarding the second Ruth Cooper employee, Santeiro wrote four prescriptions for oxycodone, totaling 270 tablets, between November 2004 and May 2005, state records show.

Santeiro could not be reached at his home in Miami Lakes on Wednesday.

In addition to probation and the fine, he must reimburse the state $5,500 for the cost of its investigation and he must perform 100 hours of community service. In addition, he can only practice medicine under the indirect supervision of a board-certified physician during his probationary period.