Fort Collins Coloradoan (Colorado)
Psychiatrist gets 9 months on Internet drug charge
By Nate Taylor
April 18, 2009

Former Fort Collins psychiatrist Christian Hageseth III was sentenced to nine months in jail Friday in a California court after he pleaded guilty earlier this year to practicing medicine without a license.

Hageseth admitted he prescribed an antidepressant to John McKay, a former Stanford University student, over the Internet in 2005 without a license to practice medicine in California.

A judge in San Mateo County Court could have sentenced Hageseth to up to one year in jail.

Instead Hageseth was sentenced to nine months in jail and three years of supervised probation. He will be allowed to serve his sentence in Colorado and also is required to pay $4,248.49 in restitution to the Medical Board of California.

A date for Hageseth to surrender to authorities will be chosen June 5.

San Mateo County prosecutors accused Hageseth of electronically signing a prescription of the generic form of Prozac to McKay through the online pharmacy JRB Health Solutions in June 2005.

McKay later killed himself at his mother’s home in California, but coroner’s reports determined the prescribed drug did not contribute as a cause of death, according to San Mateo Deputy District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe.

Medical professionals who support “telehealth” care, which increasingly uses the Internet and video technologies for a variety of health services, claim Hageseth’s conviction sets a precedent working against such tactics.

“Telemedicine is now dead,” Hageseth’s lawyer, Carelton Briggs, told the San Francisco Chronicle on Friday. “No doctor in his or her right mind would now pursue telemedicine unless licensed in all 50 states.”

But Deputy District Attorney Jennifer Ow said the prosecution was targeted at an illegal practitioner who “was not licensed in any state to do what he did.”

At the time he prescribed the drug, Hageseth was allowed to practice medicine in Colorado and renew drug prescriptions, but he was not allowed to write new prescriptions.

The Colorado State Board of Medical Examiner’s took away his right to practice medicine in 1997 after he married Laurel Burson, who he counseled through a divorce.

The Colorado Court of Appeals reversed the board’s decision in 2001 and reinstated Hageseth’s medical license but still did not allow him to write new prescriptions.