An operating pain clinic in Wauwatosa is still at the center of a federal investigation.
Special agents with Drug Enforcement Agency executed a search warrant on April 5 at the Universal Pain Center (formerly known as Wauwatosa Pain Management) on 60th and North.
The now available federal court document said agents took dozens of patient files, financial records, receipts, bank statements, script pads, prescription pills and more.
Other court records reveal a former employee told investigators she felt pressured to “prescribe high doses of narcotics” and on four separate occasions management told her when she “cut patients oxycodone doses, she was costing the clinic money, and if the clinic lost money, he would have to terminate staff.”
She also told agents the clinic allowed “patients who tested positive for cocaine or marijuana to continue receiving oxycodone.”
On the same day agents conducted their search warrant, TODAY’S TMJ4 crews spoke with a patient of the clinic. He didn’t want to be identified but said he goes to the clinic every month and pays $200 cash for 210 pills, 90 OxyContin and 120 Oxycodone pills.
In the court records, it states a former employee told agents “pharmacists would call Universal on a near daily basis questioning patient prescriptions” and that from 2014 to 2017, seven people “died of acute mixed drug intoxication within a relatively short period of time after obtaining a prescription” from the clinic.
Court documents said at least two former employees “have faced or are facing disciplinary action by the State of Wisconsin for prescribing oxycodone without legitimate medical justification.” One even admitted to writing prescriptions to people who they felt “were selling the medication.”
As of Tuesday, Universal Pain Center was still in business. They declined to comment on the case.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office is handling the investigation. A spokesperson wouldn't comment on the status of this investigation, but did say the office is “intensely committed to combating the opioid crisis.”
