Late Producer’s Doctor Named in Complaint

A Westside psychiatrist under investigation for allegedly over-medicating the late filmmaker Don Simpson recently prescribed large doses of narcotics to a patient diagnosed as suffering from anxiety, according to a complaint filed with the state Medical Board.

The six-page consumer complaint, filed Friday by former patient Tim Obrenski, characterizes Dr. Nomi J. Fredrick as a “menace to patients throughout California,” contending that her treatment caused him to become a drug addict and possibly ruined his law practice. The complaint says Fredrick negligently wrote prescriptions for codeine and other dangerous drugs for Obrenski from September 1997 until last January, when Obrenski cut off the treatment on the advice of an addiction specialist.

“What Dr. Fredrick did to me was absolutely outrageous,” Obrenski said in the complaint. “She told me I had anxiety and then proceeded to keep me drugged and addicted to narcotics for over a year.” He has also notified the psychiatrist that he intends to sue her for medical malpractice.

Obrenski’s complaint raises questions about how effective the government is in policing doctors suspected of violating prescription laws. Although the Medical Board has been investigating Fredrick since 1996 and filed an accusation against her in March seeking to revoke her license, she continues to practice medicine from her Olympic Boulevard office.

Fredrick and her attorney, David Rosner, did not return calls seeking comment Tuesday.

It has been more than three years since Simpson--whose partnership with Jerry Bruckheimer produced “Beverly Hills Cop” and other hit films--died of an overdose with traces of 21 drugs found in his blood. Many of the medications that authorities confiscated from Simpson’s Bel-Air estate after his Jan. 19, 1996, death were prescribed by Fredrick, records show.

Six months before Simpson died, he hired Fredrick and Dr. Stephen Ammerman to conduct what officials have called an illegal chemical detoxification program at the producer’s home to help him kick a drug addiction. That program ended Aug. 15, 1995, when Ammerman was found dead of a drug overdose on Simpson’s estate.

Simpson’s death triggered a federal criminal investigation of 14 local doctors and eight pharmacies that culminated in a raid nearly three years ago on the homes and offices of Fredrick and her mentor, Dr. Robert Hugh Gerner. No action resulted from the criminal inquiry; accusations against Fredrick and one other physician are the only moves taken so far by the Medical Board. Hearings focusing on Fredrick’s treatment of Simpson and several other patients are not expected to begin until late September.

Obrenski first sought treatment from Fredrick in September 1997 because he thought he had several symptoms associated with attention deficit disorder, the complaint says. Fredrick told Obrenski that he did not have attention deficit disorder but advised him that he was suffering from anxiety, the complaint says.

Over the next 15 months, the complaint says, Fredrick treated Obrenski’s anxiety with prescriptions for more than a dozen controlled substances, including codeine, oxycodone, phenobarbital, buprenex and duragesic patches (a synthetic opiate typically prescribed to patients suffering from severe physical pain). Fredrick prescribed at least 1,400 doses of codeine to Obrenski over a six-month period last year, records show.

When Obrenski would complain to Fredrick that he had developed a tolerance to a particular drug, the psychiatrist would respond by prescribing him a larger dosage or switching him to a stronger drug, the complaint says.

While Fredrick specifically told Obrenski that she was prescribing the narcotics for treatment of his anxiety, the psychiatrist also informed him she needed to conceal the real nature of his condition to avoid problems with the pharmacists that would fill his prescriptions, the complaint says.

“She told me that she was not permitted to write some of the prescriptions for anxiety and that she was going to write down that they were for diarrhea, pain and for the treatment [of other medical problems,]” Obrenski stated in the complaint. Indeed, at least one prescription written by Fredrick states that Obrenski should take two 60-mg tablets of codeine four times a day to treat diarrhea, records show.

Obrenski stopped his treatment with Fredrick after his wife threatened to leave him. After a visit with an addiction specialist, Obrenski went through six weeks of withdrawal and detoxification before kicking his addiction, the complaint says.

“The drugs [Dr. Fredrick] used to treat my so-called anxiety were narcotic medications that were given in dosages that could have been lethal,” Obrenski stated in his complaint. “Dr. Fredrick was a menace to me and is a menace to patients throughout California as long as she continues to have and use her medical license.”