ALPENA - Presque Isle County's district attorney will not be tried on felony charges for prescription fraud.
An Alpena District Court judge decided Thursday that there was no evidence of "doctor shopping" by Richard Steiger when he was receiving narcotic painkillers from two doctors at once in 2010 and 2011.
Steiger had said since the charges were announced that he had informed his doctors about the medications he was receiving. Records from his visits with two doctors and emergency room staff show that he had informed staff at the doctors' offices about his prescriptions. He had also told a medical center nurse about his prescription for migraine headaches during a follow-up visit after having an abscess drained, he said.
The doctors, along with a physician's assistant from the Alpena Regional Medical Center, claimed that Steiger had never told them how much narcotic painkillers he had been receiving. Steiger countered that he had repeatedly spoke with his primary physician and a doctor at an Alpena pain clinic about what medicines he was taking. He had twice sought treatment for two types of head pain from Dr. Robert Coombs in Alpena while he was being treated for migraines by other physicians in the area. After one doctor he had been seeing left Cheboygan, he eventually started treatment under Dr. Jeffrey Kiel, an internist practicing in Indian River. He also said that he was following his prescription from Coombs and was taking medicine from Kiel for his migraines as needed.
Kiel told Alpena County District Judge Theodore Johnson Thursday that he didn't believe Steiger had been entirely forthcoming about his use of medication. Dan White, Steiger's counsel, countered that Steiger had provided a list of medications he was taking to Kiel's staff and produced a copy of the list. It was one of many documents from Steiger's medical record White and co-counsel Troy Clarke presented.
Both doctors said that if they had been aware of how much medicine Steiger had been receiving, they would have stopped writing or refilling his prescriptions. Steiger had filled out a form for each visit to Coombs' pain clinic, a form that asked what medicines he was taking but didn't specifically ask for dosages or frequency.
"It will in the future," Coombs said. He also testified that Steiger had frequently "minimalized" his use of narcotics prescribed to him by Kiel, an allegation Steiger denied.
Data taken from the Michigan Automated Prescription System showed that Steiger was taking two different narcotics along with other medications. He sometimes suffers from as many as five migraines a week, he said, and also deals with sinus pain that has been with him for years. Gregory Townsend, an assistant state attorney general who presented evidence for the charges, said the data showed Steiger was getting duplicate prescriptions from Coombs and Kiel.
"I would argue that (Steiger) was being deceitful by not telling the doctors how much he was taking," Townsend said.
White said the doctors knew that Steiger was receiving care from each other, but neither looked at his MAPS report. Kiel and Coombs said they had been concerned by how many narcotics Steiger was taking for his pain.
Recently, Steiger has used other non-narcotic medications, he said. He also went to a specialized clinic in Ann Arbor to seek other treatments for his migraines.
The fraud charge stemmed from an investigation by the Huron Undercover Narcotics Team, an organization for which Steiger served as legal advisor. Ken Mills, the unit commander of Straits Area Narcotics Enforcement, confirmed that the investigation was handed over to his task force due to a potential conflict of interest. Several members of HUNT later contributed to the investigation, he said.
Steiger also testified that a ground-up powder Kirah Steiger, his ex-wife, found in his house and gave to a HUNT officer in 2011 was "about a tablet and a half" of Tylenol and the narcotic oxycodone, known as Percocet. It was the second time he had crushed the pills up, he said, and the first was to avoid a trip to the emergency room roughly a year and a half ago.
"I would take Imitrex," a non-narcotic injection for migraines, "and if it didn't work, I would wait an hour and take the ground-up pills with a shot of water."
Coombs, Kiel and Jeffery Kwiatkowski, a physician's assistant at ARMC's emergency room, told the court that taking crushed-up medications in this way is dangerous.
Kirah had testified on Jan. 23 that she was approached by her and Richard's daughter, who was concerned about her father's medicine use. The mother said she worried about Steiger possibly driving with their daughter while under the influence of drugs. She and Richard had an extremely difficult divorce, she said, but she had no interest in breaking up her daughter's relationship with her father, and was concerned about Richard's health.
Ultimately, White said the charge wasn't about any concerns with Steiger's drug use, but whether he had deliberately deceived his doctors to obtain them. After the dismissal, Steiger and his wife embraced, and client and counsel lauded each other for a job well done.
"Dan White and Troy Clarke are the two finest attornies I've ever met," Steiger said. "They did an awesome job of showing what the truth is."
Jordan Travis can be reached via email at jtravis@thealpenanews.com or by phone at 358-5688.