The Connecticut Medical Examining Board has reprimanded a Fairfield pulmonologist accused of improperly prescribing opioids.
According to a Connecticut Health I-Team report, Igal Staw, who works at Respiratory Associates in Fairfield was fined $7,500 and permanently banned from prescribing opioids. The state charged Staw with prescribing opioids to eight patients in 2012 and 2013 without documenting their need for the prescriptions and without explaining in their medical charts why he decided to increase the doses.
Staw will need to serve two years of probation before his state registration to prescribe controlled substances would be reinstated and he must hire a supervisor to monitor all of his pharmaceutical prescriptions. This is not the first time that Staw ran afoul of the Medical Examining Board ”“ in 2008, he received a two-year probation sentence after admitting to insurance fraud relating to false Medicare claims. In that case, he paid the federal government $250,000 to settle the charges.
