Medical professionals adhere to the Hippocratic Oath because it helps ensure that they do no harm to patients and that they protect the health of these individuals to the best of their ability. When physicians violate this code, as once doctor in California allegedly did at least 10 times, patients can suffer immeasurable consequences.
According to state medical board document obtained by The Los Angeles Times, Dr. Lisa Tseng prescribed powerful medications to three men without properly screening them. These men, and five other patients, allegedly died of overdoses from drugs prescribed to them by Tseng, according to an investigation by the paper.
Although Tseng's medical license has since expired, local medical officials doubt she will be able to practice again, as she may face criminal charges in conjunction with the deaths of some of her patients.
"I have wondered since my son, Joey, died whether Dr. Tseng would have written the same prescriptions that took his life for her own children and, in the end, how she can possibly sleep at night knowing the trail of devastation she is personally responsible for," April Rovero told the newspaper.
Several of the patients who obtained prescriptions from Tseng went to pharmacies that were far removed from her office, so the possibility exists that no line of communication existed between her office and the pharmacies that filled the prescriptions. As such, pharmacists are unlikely to have given much thought to the medications Tseng called for.
This problem, along with the one involving Tseng's negligence, may have been avoided if electronic prescribing software had been used to fill the prescriptions. Even if Tseng was not aware of the harm such drugs could cause, an e-prescribing program could have informed her of the potential negative effects of those medications. She then could have passed that information along to the patient, which would reduce the likelihood of an overdose.
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