Doctor Suspended for 22 Months After Prescribing Over 15K Sleeping Pills for More Than 10 Years

Doctors are supposed to understand what their patients are going through and offer the appropriate treatment for them to get better.

However, this doctor, who has been practising for 38 years, seems to not have his patients’ interests at heart.

Over a time frame of more than 10 years, he prescribed over 15,000 sleeping pills to his six patients.

In case you didn’t know, doctors are not supposed to provide their patients with that many hypnotic tablets.

In fact, the Ministry of Health (MOH) actually issued administrative guidelines in October 2008 on the prescription of hypnotics, and doctors were specifically warned to be careful when prescribing such drugs.

It seems that someone didn’t get the memo.

Dr Tan Joong Piang is a doctor who worked at United Medical Practitioners at Block 201B Tampines Street 21.

During this period, he tended to the following six patients and gave them an insane amount of sleeping pills like dormicum and diazepam for more than 10 years:

• Patient 1 received 3,290 tablets in 125 prescriptions over a period of more than 12 years.
• Patient 2 received 4,100 tablets in 142 prescriptions over a period of more than 13 years.
• Patient 3 received 3,582 tablets in 232 prescriptions over a period of more than 12 years.
• Patient 4 received 1,235 tablets in 59 prescriptions over a period of more than 10 years.
• Patient 5 received 1,264 tablets in 50 prescriptions over a period of more than 10 years.
• Patient 6 received 2,018 tablets in 123 prescriptions over a period of more than 14 years.

And if you thought that was the worst part, it isn’t.

Dr Tan did not keep sufficient information about his patients’ conditions and treatments in his records. Furthermore, he “allowed the patient and/or the patient’s proxies to collect hypnotics without seeing a physician, on various occasions”.

How He Was Found Out

The Singapore Medical Council filed a complaint against Dr Tan on 21 December 2012 after it received information from MOH on 29 February that year about his prescription habits for hypnotics.

It is unclear as to whether Dr Tan was made aware of the complaint filed against him, but his written explanation was submitted on 26 March 2016 and he was informed on 9 June 2017 that he would have to appear in court.

He has pleaded guilty to the charges.

However, in his defence, his lawyer claimed that none of the patients turned out to be drug addicts and none of them became addicted or developed a dependence on the hypnotics. They didn’t have any bad side effects either.

At the end of the hearing, the tribunal decided that it would be fair for Dr Tan to be suspended for 33 months, but later reduced it to 22 months because of the long delay in prosecuting him.

He will also have to pay for the cost of the proceedings and submit a written undertaking that he will not commit the offence again.

The tribunal also explained its rationale behind its decision, one of which is the advanced ages of the patients.

At the time of the last prescription, the youngest patient was aged 57 and the oldest was aged 81.

It said, “The elderly are an especially vulnerable class of persons, for which the potential risks of drug tolerance and dependency would be amplified.”

It is scary how someone you would usually trust could end up harming you instead.

It is definitely a blessing that all the patients did not become addicted to sleeping pills.

Hopefully, Dr Tan learns from his lesson and all his patients are doing fine.

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