番茄社区

A physician who was prescribing ivermectin through the America's Frontline Doctors' telemedicine platform no longer holds an active medical license in any state.

Licenses for Kathleen Ann Cullen, MD, of Seminole, Florida, are now labeled "delinquent" in Florida and "inactive" in North Carolina, according to a search of state board websites.

Cullen's license had been revoked by Alabama and Kansas last year, but her status in the two other states had allowed her to continue seeing patients via telemedicine through America's Frontline Doctors. Each virtual appointment cost $90 each, , and would often involve providing prescriptions for ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to patients with COVID-19. Neither drug has been authorized by the FDA to treat the disease, and data have shown that neither offer as a COVID-19 treatment.

Alabama revoked Cullen's license in November 2021, following an investigation into her telemedicine prescribing practices and a lack of oversight of nurse practitioners (NPs) working under her supervision.

January 2021 from an Alabama State Board of Medical Examiners hearing showed evidence of Cullen's relationship with Utah-based telemedicine company Bronson Medical, whose owner, Andrew McCubbins, had previously pleaded guilty to .

Part of the company's scheme involved having doctors, as well as the NPs and physician assistants/associates (PAs) under their supervision, write medically unnecessary orders for genetic cancer screening tests for Medicare beneficiaries, . Those were often written "without performing legitimate medical consultations and after only cursory telephonic interactions with the Medicare beneficiaries," DOJ stated, also nothing that the supervising physicians often had "no legitimate clinical or collaborative relationship" with the NPs and PAs they were supposed to supervise.

Kansas had suspended Cullen's license in May 2021 for failing to pay her annual licensing fees since March 2018, according to .

Cullen's Florida license expired on January 31 of this year. At the time of a subsequent 番茄社区 article, it wasn't clear if the board's license look-up tool simply hadn't been updated. Only two complaints were publicly available, pointing to disciplinary action in Alabama and Kansas. Now, Cullen's license is clearly labeled "delinquent" in Florida.

A hearing for the "inactive" North Carolina license has been set for June 16.

Cullen also appears to have held a license in Louisiana, which was issued in 2013. It is now labeled "revoked" with an expiration date of Dec. 31, 2021.

A search of the Federation of State Medical Boards' license database yielded no other state licenses for Cullen.

Simone Gold, MD, JD, who runs America's Frontline Doctors, pleaded guilty last month to one of five criminal counts against her in connection with her participation in the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol building. She pleaded guilty to unlawfully entering a restricted building and grounds. Gold is set to be sentenced in June, and could be ordered to serve up to 6 months in prison. She still maintains an active medical license in California.

Nick Sawyer, MD, MBA, executive director of No License for Disinformation (NLFD) and an emergency physician at University of California Davis, told 番茄社区 that although Cullen didn't lose her license directly because of disinformation, "COVID-19 disinformation fuels the demand for ineffective medications like ivermectin."

"Doctors disseminating COVID-19 disinformation have created a self-sustaining profit model by telling their followers verifiably false information about COVID-19 vaccines, and then selling them unproven medications," Sawyer said. "NLFD is pleased to see that one of these physicians is no longer able to take part in this operation, but these scams will continue until law enforcement intervenes to shut them down for good."

"This population is the same group of unvaccinated people who show up in hospitals around the country, critically ill with COVID-19, when the ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine prescribed to them inevitably fails," he added. "This is a public health issue. Why these telemedicine operations still exist is totally perplexing."

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