The medical director of a New York residential substance abuse treatment facility, who never met the patient and never personally cared for her, beat a medical malpractice claim growing out of her death because he didn’t have a physician-patient relationship with her, a federal court said.
Even if Frederick Hesse verbally prescribed Suboxone—a drug used to treat opioid withdrawal—for Cydney Buchanan, there was no evidence supporting the theory that the prescription led to her death or that it deviated from accepted medical standards, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York said.
The court also granted Hesse...