Dr. Kenneth Fox, 55, of Jenkintown, has been charged with improperly and illegally prescribing Suboxone to patients at his Middleton Township basement office, the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office announced today.
Dr. Fox faces charges of 12 counts each of administration of any controlled substance by a practitioner and furnishing false or fraudulent records and three counts of possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance, the DA said. Suboxone (buprenorphine/naloxone) is a prescription medication used to treat opioid use disorder in adults and children over 15.
He was arraigned on Wednesday, December 11 and sent to the Bucks County Correctional Facility under $75,000 bail, 10 percent.
The investigation began in November 2023 after Bucks County detectives were informed by the Middletown Township Police Department about a complaint against Fox, a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine with an office on Frosty Hollow Road. According to officials, Fox was recently fired from Jefferson Health but was still seeing patients in the basement of the same building and used suspicious and questionable practices when seeing them.
Bucks County detectives met with a patient of Dr. Fox who had been seeing the doctor since late 2017 but noticed that his medical practice changed in the summer of 2023, and Dr. Fox was moved to the basement of the building.
“In the basement, patients would have to wait inside a hallway where chairs were lined up. There were no appointment times, people would just show up and Dr. Fox would call out next when he wanted to see another patient,” the DA’s statement said. “The $130 office visit would be paid through an app on a phone, the patient told detectives. With each office visit, the patient would receive a 30-day supply of Suboxone. During each office visit, the patient would sit on a chair and Dr. Fox would be at his desk. After receiving payment, the doctor would submit the prescription for Suboxone. “
A check with the DEA revealed that Dr. Fox was recently fined $489,025 for failing to maintain complete and accurate records of controlled substances, failing to keep required receipt and dispensing records, failing to perform biennial inventories, and writing prescriptions “for stock.”
In February 2024, Bucks County detectives used confidential informants or undercover officers to visit Dr. Fox. They received Suboxone on each occasion. Between February 10 and June 4, one or all of them were e-prescribed monthly Suboxone prescriptions.
During the investigation, the undercover officers could hear Dr. Fox’s other patient visits because he left his door open, the DA said.
“At no time did they hear the doctor talk about the patient’s health or discuss any issues. Through the Pennsylvania Prescription Drug Monitor Program (PDMP), detectives discovered that Dr. Fox was prescribing Suboxone to 80 patients during the time frame of this investigation,” the DA’s statement said.
On June 24, detectives served a search and seizure warrant at Dr. Fox’s basement office which uncovered incomplete patient files with most of Dr. Fox’s notes being prescriptions. Dr. Fox told officials he could make a file based on the knowledge in his head, according to a criminal complaint.
The 80 patient files and audio files from the undercover office visits were submitted for review to Dr. Stephen Thomas, an expert in pain and disability management and controlled substance management. In his findings, Dr. Thomas wrote: “Dr. Fox was, in my opinion, selling the prescription as opposed to providing a professional service in the usual course of professional practice. The medical records for these individuals were grotesquely deficient in that they contained no significant medical information for any of the patients I reviewed.”
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Photo: Bucks County DA