What to Know
- Dr. Eddie Gamao permanently had his medical license revoked earlier this week after records revealed he over-prescribed painkillers.
- The Middlesex doctor over prescribed more than 150,000 units of the powerful opioid Oxycontin.
- This first time a NJ doctor has been banned from practice as a result of a new reporting portal
A Middlesex County doctor has had his medical license permanently revoked after records revealed he over-prescribed opioid painkillers to patients for over a year.
Dr. Eddie Gamao, a general practitioner in Piscataway, was this week permanently barred from practicing medicine in the state of New Jersey after assigning more than 150,000 units of the powerful opioid Oxycontin in on year. He exceeded the recommended daily morphine levels in 80 percent of prescriptions, according to a press release from the NJ Office of the Attorney General.
A further investigation into Gamao’s overall prescribing history revealed that within a 12-month period, he prescribed more than 9,000 oxycodone pain pills, in the strongest dosages to an 88-year-old woman and two other members of her family. The dosages were three-times the CDC’s recommended daily morphine limits.
“The numbers don’t lie,” said Paul R. Rodríguez, New Jersey Prescription Monitoring Program (NJPMP) acting director of the division of consumer affairs. “Dr. Gamao was prescribing powerful pain medication to more than 100 patients at a staggering rate and in dosages that defied any medical justification. Only a permanent revocation of his license could adequately protect the public from this man and we are pleased that the Board took that step.”
The revocation of Gamao’s license is the first time a New Jersey doctor has been permanently banned from practice as a result of allegations reported by a pharmacist via the NJ Prescription Monitoring Program’s new Suspicious Activity Report portal.
“This case demonstrates that that partnerships we’re building and the programs we’re implementing to fight New Jersey’s opioid crisis are working,” said Attorney General Gurbir Grewal.
Local
“Thanks to an alert pharmacist and the capabilities of the NJPMP, we were able to identify and shut down a dangerous flow of opioids into our community and put this problem prescriber out of practice for good.”
