I don't know the exact numbers because I got about 5 of his patients, all of whom told me they were scrambling to find someone to provide them suboxone.
All 5 out of 5 told me once they were stabilized on Suboxone, they wanted to be weaned off the medication but that other psychiatrist wouldn't wean them off and continue to charge them over $200 for a 5 minute visit per month.
Another problem was that, in case you didn't know, the first time a doctor sees someone and gives them Suboxone, you have to spend a session that the company recommends be at least one hour but could take as many as 5, and during that time the doctors a huge fee (around $500 in my parts) that is most often not reimbursed by insurance.
My policy is I will not charge for that initial examination (called the induction) so long as the the patient is already on Suboxone and they provide me with records from the previous doctor showing an induction was done. This other doctor didn't provide any of the records so I had to charge the new patients for another induction (that I by the way charge the least amount of any doctor I know of in the community, less than $300, and I'm doing that because I'd like to be able to sleep at night). I also tell my staff to bend over backwards trying to get the previous records because some of the patients I got can barely afford their treatment.
I hate saying this but from my experience, > 50% of the outpatient psychiatrists in my area, I have lots of evidence that they are not doing quality practice, and very few of them are getting sued. The same goes for the area I trained (South NJ). The only places I've seen where there is consistently good practice are from doctors who actually give a damn (and this is an individual quality), or doctors in university settings. Even in the latter, there's still bad doctors, just that there ratio of good to bad is better vs. non-university settings in the community.
Where I did fellowship, things were different. Each doctor I worked with IMHO were one of the best I've ever seen, and 3 of them were ranked to be some of America's best doctors (and there were less than 10 that taught in my program, the others were some of the best in the state, but not the country), but that too can lead to some problems. E.g. it's not the real world.
