Embattled Psychiatrist Loses Her License

Nearly five years after the overdose death of Hollywood producer Don Simpson, the Medical Board of California has stripped a Westside psychiatrist of her medical license for overprescribing addictive drugs to Simpson and other patients.

In a blistering 25-page decision, the board blasted Dr. Nomi J. Fredrick for being dishonest, incompetent and grossly negligent in prescribing morphine and other drugs to Simpson, a known drug abuser. The board also accused the psychiatrist of falsifying patient records and lying under oath during administrative hearings regarding her treatment of Simpson and other former patients.

Fredrick did not return calls on Wednesday seeking comment. Her attorney Henry Fenton said he had not seen the ruling but was very disappointed and planned to appeal the decision.

Witnesses in the case wondered why it has taken authorities so long to act against Fredrick. The psychiatrist has been allowed to continue practicing medicine and prescribing drugs despite a barrage of complaints filed against her, including her alleged connection to the deaths of Simpson and another former patient, Dr. Stephen Ammerman.

The Los Angeles Police Department, the Drug Enforcement Agency and the medical board launched separate investigations after a series of stories published in The Times detailing Fredrick’s involvement in an illegal drug detoxification program at Simpson’s estate in 1995. The federal investigation culminated in a raid three years ago on her Westside home and offices, but no action resulted from the criminal inquiry.

It was only after the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office and the U.S. Justice Department failed to file charges against Fredrick that Karen Chappelle, a deputy attorney general working with the medical board, began pushing last year for administrative hearings to revoke the psychiatrist’s license. The ruling, written by Administrative Law Judge Ralph B. Dash and issued late Monday, is the first action taken against Fredrick by any government agency.

“I’m dismayed that the bureaucratic machinery works so terribly slow, but I’m thrilled about the outcome,” said Richard Ammerman, whose son died of a drug overdose at Simpson’s house. “My son’s death destroyed me. I guess the government just doesn’t take these things as seriously as we wounded do out here.”

The ruling does not blame Fredrick for the deaths of Simpson and Ammerman, but it does resurrect questions about the circumstances surrounding their demise.

Simpson--whose partnership with producer Jerry Bruckheimer yielded such blockbusters as “Beverly Hills Cop”--died of an overdose Jan. 19, 1996. Traces of 21 drugs were found in his blood.

Many of the pills and capsules that authorities confiscated from Simpson’s Bel-Air estate after his death were prescribed during the summer of 1995, when the producer hired Dr. Stephen Ammerman--along with Fredrick--to conduct an illegal chemical detoxification program at the producer’s home to help him kick a drug addiction. That program came to a halt Aug. 15, 1995, when Ammerman was found dead of a drug overdose, including morphine, on Simpson’s estate.

Testimony by nurses and other witnesses in the case indicated that the dining room table was covered that day with a pile of dangerous drugs. According to the judge, Simpson’s entire house was “replete with drugs, alcohol and a staff of sycophants to do his bidding.”

At the hearings, Fredrick testified that she helped a private detective [employed by Simpson] on Aug. 15, 1995, to sanitize Simpson’s house by removing all the drugs before police arrived.

The ruling includes other new details about Simpson’s drug problems. It says that on the night after Ammerman died, Simpson ingested a massive amount of drugs prescribed by Fredrick and that she found him sprawled on the floor of his study, unconscious and lying in his own vomit.

Instead of calling paramedics, she revived him and put him to bed. Fredrick went to a pharmacy and bought him more drugs. A toxicology report issued two days later at UCLA showed that Simpson had taken a multiple drug overdose, including some of the drugs furnished by Fredrick.

Simpson checked into UCLA at the urging of his family on Aug. 18, 1995. According to the UCLA doctor’s discharge summary, Simpson had been treating himself for purported impotence and had undergone drug screens that tested positive for opiates, barbiturates and amphetamines, the ruling said.

Against medical advice, Simpson checked out of UCLA on Aug. 20, 1995 and checked into the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kan. Simpson checked out of the clinic five days later and took a trip to Maui, Hawaii, with Fredrick, the ruling says.

On the first night in the hotel on Maui, Simpson helped himself to $114 worth of alcohol from the self-service room bar and a bottle of assorted prescription drugs, the ruling says. Later that night, he appeared naked and delirious in the hallway of the hotel, banging on Fredrick’s door, the ruling says.

Fredrick responded by ushering Simpson back to his room and stationing a guard outside the door. Fredrick charged Simpson $500 an hour and was on call 24 hours a day during their five-day stay in Hawaii, the ruling says.

During her stay, however, the psychiatrist charged a massage, facial and two salon visits costing $500 to Simpson on Aug. 26, 1995, and the following day she billed him for $23,500 in jewelry and $1,000 in clothes, the ruling says.

At the hearings, Fredrick described herself as a doctor on the cutting edge of the use of drugs as the primary component of psychiatric care, the ruling says. She even had the term “psycho-pharmacology” printed on her business cards. By the end of the trial, however, the ruling says Fredrick “professed to not understand what the term meant.”

The board accused Fredrick of abandoning Simpson while he was under her care in August 1995 and of failing to hospitalize him that month. Simpson died of a drug overdose five months later.