Medical board moves to revoke license of Calif. osteopath linked to overdose cases

Officials move to strip Calif. doctor of license

LOS ANGELES — State medical officials said Monday they were moving to revoke the license of a California doctor who has been linked to fatal overdose cases.

The Osteopathic Medical Board of California said it would be filing misconduct accusations with the state attorney general’s office against Dr. Lisa Tseng.

“Dr. Tseng has some major problems,” said Dr. Donald Krpan, executive director of the osteopathic medical board. “Her license is in jeopardy.”

Tseng also is the subject of a federal Drug Enforcement Administration investigation into her prescribing practices.

Last week, the agency suspended her certificate to prescribe controlled substances on the grounds that she was an imminent danger to public health and safety.

Repeated calls to Tseng’s Advance Care Medical office in Rowland Heights, about 25 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, were not returned.

Krpan said his board had received multiple complaints about Tseng going back more than a year.

Tseng wrote more than 27,000 prescriptions over a three-year period starting in January 2007 — an average of 25 a day, according to a DEA affidavit.

The affidavit describes three fatalities of people who had been prescribed drugs by Tseng. In a case in Irvine, a man died April 12, 2009, after taking a mixture of drugs, including OxyContin and hydromorphone.

Another man in Laguna Niguel died June 2, 2009, after taking hydrocodone and other drugs prescribed by Tseng, and in May 2008 a man in Redlands was involved in a fatal car crash after the doctor prescribed him OxyContin, Xanax and other drugs.

The Los Angeles Times said at least six men have died of overdoses since 2007 after visiting Tseng.

Bruce Stavron said his son Matt Stavron, 24, had visited Tseng two or three days before he died, and medicine prescribed by Tseng, including OxyContin, was found near his body after his death from an accidental overdose.

Matt Stavron was severely injured at age 13 in a motocross accident and received morphine for the pain during a weeklong hospital stay.

His parents believe that began his long struggle with addiction — a battle that ended with his death in 2007.

He had been sober for the three months preceding his death, his father said.

The family had always hoped for more answers from the coroner’s office but didn’t get answers until the Times linked their son’s case to Tseng three years later.

“We wanted to find out more about the doctor, get more details. The coroner’s report we got back never gave us the details of what actually was the cause of death,” Bruce Stavron told The Associated Press. “We thought that was all the information that was ever going to be available to us.”

The investigation into Tseng’s practice has reopened wounds for the San Clemente family.

“I’m just angry and my hope is that nobody else has to go through what we did,” he said. “I know what this has done to our family and it doesn’t get any easier.”

Associated Press Writer Gillian Flaccus in Santa Ana contributed to this report.

(This version CORRECTS Adds details, byline, contributor tag. Spelling of Krpan is correct.)