NKY doctor who overprescribed painkillers to feed his opioid use sentenced to prison

A Northern Kentucky doctor who overprescribed opioids to his patients in order to fuel his addiction to prescription painkillers will spend time behind bars, court records show.

Dr. Michael Grogan, 70, was sentenced Wednesday in federal court in Covington to a year and one day in prison followed by three years of supervised release, according to the court records.

Grogan pleaded guilty in October 2021 to six counts of illegally distributing oxycodone, court records show. Oxycodone is a generic opioid painkiller available by prescription.

Grogan, of Lakeside Park, owned and operated Go Beyond Medicine in Crescent Springs when he wrote the illegal prescriptions, prosecutors said in court filings.

Grogan had a history of substance-use disorder, according to public information with the Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure, and voluntarily surrendered his license to practice medicine in March 2019.

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He gave up his license in the midst of a February 2019 investigation into his activities, during which agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, FBI and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, along with the Northern Kentucky Drug Strike Force, searched his practice on a warrant. 

A patient of Grogan's told federal agents in December 2018 that she'd been sharing oxycodone with Grogan, a plea agreement states. The patient said she received a prescription every 28 days and that she would give 30-50 pills from each prescription to Grogan.

The two would meet after hours at different locations to make the exchanges, the document says, adding Grogan increased the dosage and amount of oxycodone he prescribed the patient to compensate for the painkillers she was giving him.

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The patient had evidence on her cell phone that corroborated the meetings, prosecutors said, adding federal agents had the patient call Grogan and he instructed her to pick up a prescription he planned to call in to her pharmacy and bring it to their next appointment.

Similar transactions were described to authorities by four other patients, according to the court filings, adding that some pharmacists refused to fill prescriptions written by Grogan as they were "excessive."

When federal agents searched Grogan's practice, they found unmarked bottles of oxycodone and OxyContin in his office, along with a list of nine patient names and phone numbers in his wallet, prosecutors said.

"The pattern of behavior that (Grogan) undertook was designed to feed his opiate painkiller addiction," Grogan's attorneys wrote in court filings prior to his sentencing, adding he's a chronic pain sufferer and his prescribing wasn't part of a money-making scheme.

Grogan's attorneys, in arguing for a lesser sentence, cited his ailing health and his cooperation in testifying against two other Northern Kentucky doctors, William Seifert and Timothy Ehn, who were convicted of healthcare fraud last month.

"The length of (the sentence) reflects some of the good Dr. Grogan has done in his life," Nick Alig, Grogan's lawyer, told The Enquirer. He described the doctor's prescribing as a "misstep in his career."