I talked to him a couple of weeks ago. Longoria: Pharmaceutical companies marketed these drugs aggressively to doctors. Young was indicted on drug-trafficking charges in April 2019. Some people from the area said they had been harassed by Jeff and were afraid to speak out. If you speak against me, she remembers him saying, youre gonna regret it.. But, in theory, there should have been a check on all this. Editing by Katherine Wells, Julia Longoria, and Denise Wills. In fact, he avoided doctors at all costs. Young failed to diagnose the mans hypertension and overprescribed to him, according to court testimony, and later the patient suffered a stroke. His followers across social-media accounts numbered in the low thousandshigher than a casual users, but a trifle compared with even a C-list celebritys fan base. Watching this makes me really sad, one YouTube user commented on the Rock Doc pilot in 2019. And Jeff, sitting at the center of it, covered in tattooshe had a sort of unlikely charisma too. Khazan: I started calling up former patients to try to understand the relationship Jeff had with them, and the appeal of this whole Rock Doc thing. Updated at 10:28 p.m. In April 2019, he was indicted on drug-trafficking charges, along with five other medical providers in Jackson, two of whom were the supervising physicians Young, as a nurse practitioner, was required to have. He tried to ignore it, but when he woke up the next morning, LeAnn noticed he still looked really bad. One admitted that Young had flirted with her. This episode was reported by Olga Khazan and produced by Alvin Melathe. On Instagram, photos tagged #preventagenix show Young on a motorcycle, surrounded by women. Tune in today! Why would you go to this doctor? Khazan: LeAnns story was similar to Tanyas and LaRhondas and Christis. Whether or not Young is convicted, the perverse incentives for doctors to see patients for short visits and to prescribe too many unnecessary drugs will remain. He would try to squeeze in even more patient visits each daysometimes well over 50, former employees sayand would either forget to document services or would document services he hadnt provided. Every time. Youngs story raises the question of where care crosses into harm. 0:06. I swear he didnt look at my leg for 30 seconds, and he told me exactly what it was, he says. (Fades under.). Though the system came slowly for Young, during the years he was being investigated America underwent a national reckoning about opioids. Khazan: Like, for example, here he is sniffing a pair of womens underwear with his sidekick, a friend named Kevin. It was a story her daughter told her about a time she got sick. Minutes after finishing the second drink, Stephanie fell face-first onto the floor. Calles: Doctors judged me because of my weight. Part of the judges reasoning was that Youngs Facebook posts showed a propensity for violence., Young continued blogging from jail, somehow managing to write a few posts for a website that promotes medical providers rights to prescribe opioids freely. I cant say for sure what the right course of treatment for LaRhonda was, and where opioids fit into that. The department suggested that he surrender his license in order to resolve the matter quickly, but according to a report from The Tennessean and The Jackson Sun, a defiant Young rejected that offer. Even when they do, the boards are mainly composed of doctors and nurses peers, who can be reluctant to throw the book at one of their own, says Rebecca Haw Allensworth, a Vanderbilt University law professor who has studied medical boards. Though both she and Reaves said Young should be held accountable for anything he did wrong, Stephanie told me that she forgave him. He soon opened a new clinic, which he called GeneXis Health. He would chitchat with his patients, ask them about their latest tattoos. the rock doc' jeff young. A former employee said that staffers had to go to Youngs houseanother McMansionto drag him out of bed, and that he would occasionally arrive at the clinic drunk. Most of these doctors werent like Jeff. Branding himself as the "Rock Doc," he flooded his social media accounts with images of a party-loving lifestyle, vitriol for his "haters" and even a pilot episode for a reality TV show . They entered the office and ordered the clinics staffers to lie on the floor. An active and fun show following the life of FNP Jeff Young II at work and his life after work. Lots of people refused to talk to me because they fear Young, but many others refused because they love him. 1:32. Jeff gets his nick name "Rock Doc" from his loyal patients. Youre just probably not feeling good. But they never believed us. had lower back pain and complained of numbness in his left arm. Naylor: (A long beat and a breath.) It fit neatly, at least, into a story I was already really familiar with: It was the greedy provider who was allegedly taking advantage of his patients. This ingratiating tendency allegedly extended to handing out prescriptions. Khazan: Jeff was working as a nurse practitioner at a clinic called Preventagenix in Jackson, Tennessee. (A snare hit plays, and the music changes tone again. Jackson, Tennessee. For the occasion of his detention hearing, Young wore a cerulean suit and a comb-over. I am a, uh, nurse practitioner. Young and Phillips, both longtime musicians, reveal that theyre working on some rap songs about Youngs haters, then ponder how to do gang signs. Young, 43, a Tennessee nurse practitioner who called himself 'Rock Doc' and once piloted . Young is . I tried to reach out to women who Jeff was rumored to have exchanged drugs for sex with, but none of them wanted to talk on the record. Young got married, then quickly got divorced, according to several people who knew him then. (Somber, reflective droning notes play up. Though criminal cases against doctors and nurse practitioners like Young are still relatively rare, they are growing more common. 1986-present. Dr. Jeff is married to Petra Mickova Petra though she is his second wife. Automated News Feed Subreddit No Censorship, Just News. The men each contributed $40,000 to the endeavor. An active and fun show following the life of FNP Jeff Young II at work and his life after work. Jackson nurse practitioner Jeffrey Young will await his opioid trafficking trial in jail, an appeals court decided Thursday. Its light and upbeat.). Young: Very nice. Nurses are consistently rated higher in honesty and ethics than all other professions that Gallup asks about, by a wide margin, the polling firm said in a January 2020 survey. Its gonna be a little cold, all right? Khazan: In 2016, Jeff tried to broadcast his world even more widely. By 2012, Young was allegedly supplying testosterone without a clear medical reason to high schoolers who wanted to bulk up. A staffer, who declined to talk on the record, asked me why I was writing about him. * This article has been clarified to more accurately convey the details of Gutgsell's plea. Khazan: Christi had really appreciated what Jeff did for her. I mean, you wouldve thought they were giving away meds for free, to be honest. Some female patients opted for a service the clinic offered that Young called VIP status, in which they paid $500 a year to skip the waiting room and get Youngs cellphone number, one former employee said. (The drugmaker that is most often blamed for the epidemic doesnt agree with this assessment: Suggesting that activities that last occurred more than 16 years ago are responsible for todays complex and multifaceted opioid crisis is deeply flawed, a Purdue Pharma spokesperson, Robert Josephson, said in a statement to The New York Times for a story on this issue.). You know that. Have you ever been to a doctor and you just didnt feel comfortable? Some of his patients were police officers whom he would occasionally ask for favors. Some speculated that it could have been drugs, alcohol, the prospect of fame, a divorce from his second wife the year after PreventaGenix launched, or a combination of all of them. Khazan: Jeff had been good to Tanya in the clinic, which was an experience that she didnt usually have with doctors. Khazan: And he posted dozens of videos there. At first, Young seemed to Reitz like an affable, outgoing dad who loved rock and practiced medicine. But it played [Emphasizing.] Thats okay. Not all of them were into the whole edgy hard-rock thing at first. A woman Ill call Stephanie developed a friendship with Young a few years ago when she was regularly seeing him for swelling in her throat. Young benefited from an almost reflexive societal trust in the medical profession. Listen to the trailer for. Patients, meanwhile, dont always know that medical boards exist in the first place, or that they can complain to them if theyve been wronged, Lisa Robin, the chief advocacy officer for the Federation of State Medical Boards, says. He didnt mind saying a curse word or two.. His lawyer also declined to answer any specific allegations. Thank you for taking care of me, not just the sex and satisfaction but the Soma too, wrote one patient, referring to a muscle relaxer. Young became known for putting drugs into the hands of almost anyone who asked. His case offers a unique look at the opioid crisis. Thrash metal, heavy metal, speed metal, blues, classical. Most doctor appointments, after all, average a nerve-racking 17 minutes, in which you spill out a complicated medical history and pray the doctor has a good solution. a dangerous combination of an opioid, a benzodiazepine, and a muscle relaxant. Because he prescribed my opiates, and I took them as prescribed, and I had no problems with it. Shed come to see Jeff for a range of health issues, from diabetes to cystitis, and she just didnt buy the things people were saying about him. Health care is one of the Jackson areas most important industries, and West Tennessee Healthcare, which once employed Young, is the largest employer in the county. (One employee, Karla Wright, testified later that she had never seen Young have sex with women at the office. He decked out PreventaGenix with psychedelic artwork and set the stereo to loud rock. The agents seized about 350 of Youngs patient charts and every computer in the office, according to Gutgsell, the former office manager, and the notice of seizure states that about 10,000 individual doses of hydrocodone were also taken. Fullington, who was also let go, told me she got a threatening call from Young. Throughout Youngs year-long treatment of MY, Young failed to conduct pill counts, consult a state database meant to monitor the dispensing of controlled substances, and discuss with MY the risks of combining these drugs, according to the document. Why didnt anyone try to put a stop to this? I just had a lot of questions about how could this happen., Further reading: The Hard-Partying, Rock-Obsessed Nurse at the Center of a Massive Opioid Bust. (Fades under.). Despite some patients praise for Young, the evidence that he routinely walked far over that line remains alarming. As many as three women a day allegedly came to his office for sex, though one former employee said Young might have had sex with more women after hours. Phillips popped off to a friend.). And even then, I didnt want to hear it. His small fiefdom of followers created a mini echo chamber, feeding back approval and encouragement. Khazan: Ive talked to a lot of patients over the years who feel very uncomfortable around their doctors. PreventaGenix had a back door, and before long employees started noticing that some female patients would come in through it and go directly to Youngs office. The week that followed Martin Luther King Jr.s assassination was revolutionaryso why was it nearly forgotten? (There were different Jeff Youngs in [the Records Management System] and I had very little information so he was not added to the report, the police report states.) I accept all insurance, he told her. He didnt pull any punches, she said. Many people in Jackson seemed to see themselves in Young. She appreciated that he asked about her grandkids. Through his attorney, he declined to comment on this and the other allegations in this story because of a gag order issued by the judge in the case.). He would still be allowed to prescribe testosterone and cough syrup with codeine, however. (A moment of narrative silence. The trial for "Rock Doc" Jeffrey Young, the infamous nurse practitioner from Jackson who was indicted in 2019 on drug trafficking charges and accused of . As so often happens with irresponsible medical providers, Youngs popularity in the communityalong with an indifferent, slow-moving bureaucracyallowed him to operate for half a decade despite initial warning signs and then multiple arrests and investigations. Every single time I went to that doctor and I left, Stairway to Heaven played. They didnt play Stairway to Heaven or have Periscope accounts. Khazan: The way I first got to know Jeff Young was through videos he posted online. It doesnt sound like much of a sella middle-aged man doling out medical advice in a city midway between Memphis and Nashville. He invited a cameraman to document his life and eventually had it edited into a pilot for a reality-TV show. (Droning music, reflective and cool, plays.). (Later, Phillips pleaded guilty to threatening a Drug Enforcement Administration agent who was investigating Young. Were going to take the worst of the worst. [A moment of indistinct crosstalk.] ], Oh, you look fine to me.. Never give up God is full of second chances, one woman wrote. If a patient would text him a compliment, he would blast it all over Facebook, one former employee told me. Around 2013, Young allegedly prescribed hydrocodone, a benzodiazepine, and Adderall for a patient whose visits he described as a concierge-type thing, Pickering said in court. Nurse practitioner Jeff Young, known as the "Rock Doc," and . LeAnn Naylor: I have not had a lot of positive interactions with doctors. Natalia Ramirez: This episode of The Experiment was reported by Olga Khazan and produced by Alvin Melathe, with editing by Katherine Wells, Julia Longoria, and Denise Wills. Thats the only way you can describe it. Khazan: Or stitch someone up after they cut themselves on a wine glass. But she also told me the story of her ex-husband. Khazan: Do you remember what kind of music was playing? How was a nurse practitioner whose behavior was so outrageous allowed to treat patients for so long? Young: (Serious, and a little angry.) Then it fades out.). Calles: And I mean, he didnt dress like your average doctor. ), (What sounds like road noise plays in the background of a Periscope clip. Fact-check by Michelle Ciarrocca and Jack Segelstein. Stephanie had been in an abusive relationship and dealt with a slew of other traumas. There was no statement even made to the Feds. And people in the pilot gave testimonials saying as much. Naylor: And I remember him saying, Bring him to the office. 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