Tag Archives: prescriptions

Miami psychiatrist prescribed about 4,000 prescriptions per month for 5 years costing taxpayers $43 million

Since 2004, a Miami psychiatrist has prescribed almost 14 million pills to Medicaid patients at a cost to taxpayers of $43 million, a state agency says. Fernando Mendez-Villamil would have had to issue 4,000 prescriptions a month, or 1,000 a week, to keep up that pace, according to the report released this week by the Agency for Health Care Administration. Altogether in the six years from 2004-09, he issued nearly 285,000 prescriptions, the AHCA report showed.

Breaking News: Florida Psychiatrist who wrote 153 psych drug prescriptions per day is now under federal investigation

Medicare has stopped reimbursing a Miami psychiatrist who prescribed about 96,685 mental health drugs to Medicaid patients in 18 months. U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa said the figures are alarming and has asked the Department of Health and Human Services to investigate Dr. Fernando Mendez Villamil and other top prescribers.

Psychiatrist comes under fire from Senator Grassley for writing 96,685 psych drug prescriptions – about 153 per day

The letter from Senator Grassley does not mention Fernando Mendez-Villamil by name, but it cites documents from the Florida Agency for Healthcare Administration about a prescriber who wrote 96,685 prescriptions for from the last quarter of 2007 through the first quarter of 2009 for Medicaid patients. Mendez-Villamil wrote nearly twice as many prescriptions for psychiatric drugs as the No. 2 Medicaid prescriber in the state.

Number of Prescriptions Written in UK for Antidepressants Nearly Equals Entire Population

Writing in the Guardian, Ed Halliwell examines the reason for this trend, noting that antidepressant prescriptions have increased more than threefold since the beginning of the 1990s, far outstripping the increase in the percentage of the population classified with a “common mental disorder.”

In UK, Doctors under fire as an alarming numbers of children are given drugs to combat depression and ADHD

Shadow Health Minister Anne Milton said doctors should be opting for non-drug treatments rather than reaching for the prescription pad. ‘This data shows that increasingly health professionals are prescribing drugs to treat child mental health problems, when evidence suggests that talking therapies can have an equal, if not better effect.