The Justice Department announced today that Dr. Robin Ann Cox of Greenwood, who practiced in Rogers, had pleaded guilty to a single charge in an investigation of the overprescription of opioids. Sentencing will be later.
She pleaded to distribution of a controlled drug without an effective prescription. CORRECTION: The original news release from the U.S. attorney, reported here, said she had also pleaded to making a false statement to federal investigators. That was incorrect. A subsequent correction said she pleaded to only one count and yet another correction changed the description of the one charge in the plea bargain.
The probe began last year, prompted, the U.S. attorney’s office said, by multiple complaints. Investigators examined prescription data from the day the clinic opened in May 2018 through mid-September. From a release:
In the time period analyzed, Dr. Cox prescribed 214,050 tablets of oxycodone, with a street value of approximately $3,204,765 if diverted. Investigators also discovered that approximately 90% of the patients to whom Dr. Cox prescribed controlled substances during that time received a prescription for at least one opioid.
In the third, further corrected news release that gave a different description of the one charge in the plea bargain, the U.S. attorney’s office said:
According to the plea agreement, Dr.Cox was employed by the Arkansas Medical Clinic (AMC) in Rogers, Arkansas. Cox and the owner of AMC contacted the DEA by telephone to report that prescriptions from Cox‘ s previous employment had been fraudulently written and filled. Cox specifically identified a prescription for patient D.S. written on May 19, 2019 and filled on May 20, 2019, and a prescription for F. R. dated May 17, 2019 and filled on May 17, 2019. During the investigation into these prescriptions, the DEA discovered that Cox had written D.S. his/her prescription in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant in Fort Smith, Arkansas, in the Western District of Arkansas, Fort Smith Division.