CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – One of the two doctors from Clarksville indicted in a Kentucky opioid distribution case claims his involvement in the matter was only by association, and he blamed his former boss, who has pleaded guilty in the case.
“I just got dragged into this because I was his medical director, basically,” Dr. John Stanton told Clarksville Now on Wednesday.
‘It was his clinic’
Dr. James Maccarone pleaded guilty in the case on Jan. 24. Stanton has pleaded not guilty. Stanton said he was not the one who created the treatment plans that involved high doses of narcotics.
“It was his (Maccarone’s) clinic, these were his patients, he had vetted them all, he had brought them all into the practice, he had them on those levels of medications, and he needed me to make sure that they were getting alternative treatments and injections – that’s why I was hired,” Stanton said.
Stanton said he normally did not write the narcotics prescriptions, but he had written seven or eight prescriptions over a two-year period during his four-year employment with the clinic, and he did that only when Maccarone was out on sick leave.
“So it looks like I was right along with him with all these medications, but I was actually like a substitute filling in when he was gone,” Stanton said.
Court records show that while Maccarone and two other individuals in Kentucky were indicted last March, Stanton was not named in the case until July when the superseding indictment was filed.
Stanton was also named in the “essential elements” portion of Maccarone’s plea agreement, which Stanton said was frustrating. “It was his plea agreement – it wasn’t my plea agreement. I don’t know why he would need to include my name,” Stanton said.
“The fact that he pled guilty and added my name does not mean that I had anything to do with that. He was a medical doctor and he needed a medical director, and my job as a medical director for him was just to see patients that had higher levels of narcotics, and it’s a state requirement, and made sure they got alternative treatments.”
‘I had no way of knowing that’
Stanton also said he had no idea patients were traveling over 200 miles from eastern Kentucky to Clarksville to come to Maccarone’s clinic.
“Those people got there in the morning, and I came in after my clinic in the afternoon at 4 or 5,” Stanton said, adding he was often given a list of patients with elevated medication levels to conduct physical exams on.
He also said he examined the patients’ X-rays to make sure they actually required the medications, and he talked to them about lowering the levels of medications and provided alternative treatments.
As for the sign on the front of the now-closed Maccarone clinic that tells patients seeking care to instead go to Stanton’s clinic, The Joint and Spine Pain Center, Stanton said the Tennessee Medical Board asked them to do that.
“The state asked us to put that sign up because patients had nowhere to go,” Stanton said. “They said, ‘We know you’re the medical director there, and these patients need to be seen. Would you be willing to help out and see these patients who need their medications?'”
He added that he would have taken the sign off of the door a long time ago, but it’s on the inside of a glass door that’s now locked.
Tennessee Medical Board officials did not return a call seeking a response.
Stanton’s ability to prescribe schedule II narcotics has been temporarily suspended in Tennessee and Kentucky, according to state records.
Clarksville Now reached out to Stanton’s attorney, Peter Strianse of Nashville, for comment. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Kentucky and Maccarone’s attorney, Jim Todd of Nashville, have yet to return requests for comment.
