Sacramento's top jail doctor may have medical license suspended

State officials expect to find out Thursday whether the medical license for the Sacramento County Jail's top doctor will be suspended following his arrest last week on charges of writing unauthorized prescriptions for OxyContin.

The California Medical Board sought to suspend Dr. Peter Dietrich's medical license in a hearing today after saying in documents that "his actions threaten the safety of the public" and that there is evidence he wrote precriptions for thousands of OxyContin tablets for himself in the name of his ailing 88-year-old mother.

The administrative law judge hearing the matter took it under advisement.

"We hope to have an order by tomorrow," board spokeswoman Candis Cohen said.

Dietrich was arrested Jan. 14 and placed on paid leave from his job overseeing medical services at the jail. He was released from jail on $5,000 bail last week and was scheduled to be arraigned this morning, but that was postponed to Feb. 20.

He faces 24 charges related to the allegations, including 18 felony counts. Dietrich has declined to comment previously and could not be reached this morning. His cell phone is not accepting calls and he did not immediately respond to a message left at his Davis home.

Dietrich has had his license since August 1987 and has no previous record of discipline or wrongdoing.

As part of the effort to suspend him, officials submitted documents indicating that from July through December of last year Dietrich issued 70 prescriptions in the name of his mother, Margaret Dietrich.

OxyContin is a highly addictive opiate and officials got involved in the investigation of Dietrich after his mother's insurance company reported that more than one doctor was prescribing drugs to her.

Her primary care physician, Dr. Paul Riggle, had prescribed some generic Oxycodone to her at one point to help with pain she was suffering, but he became concerned when the insurance company provided information about the amounts of other prescriptions of OxyContin she was receiving, documents show.

Riggle called one of the pharmacies involved and was told that Dr. Dietrich had been prescribing the drug in his mother's name. "Dr Riggle was troubled by this because physicians do not normally prescribe narcotics to family members," the documents state.

Riggle confronted Dietrich in July, but Dietrich denied prescribing the medicine, documents state.

The next day, Riggle met with Dietrich and his wife and Dietrich admitted issuing the prescriptions, the documents state.

Riggle told Dietrich to stop prescribing the drugs to his mother, but documents state that after that Dietrich issued prescriptions for 3,170 OxyContin tablets.

Authorities believe Dietrich was issuing the prescriptions for his own use.