Don't know what happened to him. I can tell you this was in Butler County Ohio at a place I moonlit at. I was kind of ticked off that the previous doctor did what he did, but didn't even know it was this bad until the patient said what he said. I talked to a nurse there and she told me the idiot even argued benzos financially helps patients.
I had one patient of his that had panic disorder that was Muslim, and was on a rather high dosage of Xanax. I told her why I didn't think she should be on Xanax, and she wasn't buying it at first. I spent about 15 minutes explaining the addiction potential and that it works very similarly to alcohol. She flipped out. The previous doctor was Muslim and she told me she felt totally insulted because as a Muslim she is not to take alcohol so to take something pretty much on the same order of it, even almost the same pharmacologically was an insult to her and that the other doctor was Muslim she felt even more betrayed because he of all people should've understood her feeling on this.
Then I had the opposite problem. I recommended we get her off over the course of a few months, but then she wanted off of it pretty much all at once. I had to spend the next 15 minutes telling he she could get a seizure which just made her go from very upset to VERY VERY VERY MAD (HE DID THIS TO ME?!?!?!) We did do a wean off over the course of the next month.
Edit: That same nurse told me she asked the same doctor to help her out with someone (forgot what it was) and he dropped by her house. Within a few minutes, he had all of his clothes off and was making moves on her.
I wouldn't give a 'new' pt I didn't automatically assume responsibility for from another provider a very long benzo taper.
I have kicked out patients pretty quickly even when offered the long taper. Many of these patients really didn't know what was going on and I can't blame them having placed their faith in their doctor. Some of them, however, are just people trying to exploit the system. I kicked out one patient after two sessions after she was yelling and screaming at me to the degree where I thought I was going to get attacked. Now I'm a guy, know martial artis, but this was a 6' tall, very muscular and overweight woman that didn't have a unibrow, but hey, she should've given her attitude.
She demanded to talk to my boss. I gladly introduced her to the boss and told her, "please tell the doctor here why you are mad at me, because I will not supply you with medications that are considered dangerous when mixed together, Xanax and Suboxone, and are contraindicated by the manufacturer."
The previous doctor gave her as much of those two meds as she wanted without scrutinizing the regimen, and in this case it was a different doctor than the one above that graduated from a fellowship in addiction of all things. This woman gave an obese patient with sleep apnea high dosages of Suboxone to help him sleep of all things just to give you an idea of just WTF I was dealing with when I took over this chump's patients.
Getting to the point, if you every take over anyone's practice, their practices may greatly differ from your own IMHO, if you are a good clinician and so was the previous doctor, the level of disagreement will be on a reasonable plane. E.g. he might've started a psychotic patient on Geodon, I might've started one on Risperdal. Not a big deal.
But if there's a major difference, every single patient you see for the first time, you'll have to go through a very difficult period that will drag on the interview, thus making this far less profitable, of either having to keep them on a medication regimen you don't like or explaining why you're changing it. Often times the retiring practitioner will want to keep tabs on his patients becuase he has a bond with them and you'll be in the oh-so-uncomfortable position of patients telling him you told them he put them on the wrong meds.
Tell me that dude lost his medical license! Incredible.
