They say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but it's not turning out to be so for Dr. Kevin Ray Buckwalter.
Following a Las Vegas newspaper investigation, the San Clemente physician is poised to lose his license to practice medicine in California.
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Buckwalter has mostly practiced in Nevada, and after some of his patients died the Las Vegas Sun launched an investigation. That led to a Nevada Board of Medical Examiners probe that determined Buckwalter's actions led to the death of at least one patient, that he'd prescribed medications that did not fit certain patients' afflictions, that he'd prescribed the maximum dosage at the beginning of therapy and that his record keeping when it came to scripts was shoddy.
His license to prescribe controlled substances in Nevada was suspended in November 2008, and the suspension was lifted in August 2011 pending disciplinary hearings. He and the medical board ultimately reached a settlement that concluded he'd failed to keep proper records for three patients, with all other allegations dropped. He was publicly disciplined and ordered to pay the board's $100,000 investigation and prosecution costs.
But with a San Clemente residential address listed as his California office address, this state's medical board on Jan. 9 filed a complaint against Buckwalter that could cost him his Golden State license, which is current through Sept. 30. Why? State law allows license revocations for doctors who have been disciplined in other government jurisdictions.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.