Former assistant at Wagoner Medical Center signs plea agreement
KOKOMO, Ind. (WLFI) – A former physician’s assistant with the Wagoner Medical Center in Burlington has agreed to plead guilty to his involvement in the over-prescribing of narcotics and other controlled substances to patients.
Sixty-three-year-old Gary Hartman has agreed to plead guilty to aiding, inducing or causing dealing in a narcotic drug – a class B felony. As part of the agreement, seven other charges were dismissed.
Investigators in Howard County have been able to link 27 deaths to the Wagoner Medical Centers in Burlington and Kokomo dating from 2007 to 2012.
The owner of the business, Dr. Don Wagoner, pleaded guilty in 2014 to seven felonies, including dealing a narcotic drug and dealing in a controlled substance. Wagoner was sentenced to two years in prison, eight years of home detention and 20 years of probation.
During their investigation, law enforcement discovered that Wagoner wrote nearly 60,000 prescriptions for controlled substances over a four-year span. Wagoner also conducted intake physicals at a drug treatment center in Kokomo, where many of the people seeking addiction treatment were his own patients.
Investigators say Hartman, Dr. Wagoner’s physician’s assistant, would see up to 45 patients a day. According to court documents, Hartman admitted to sometimes using prescription forms presigned by Dr. Wagoner.
As part of the plea agreement, Hartman will be sentenced to eight years in the Indiana Department of Corrections. However, six and a half years of his sentence will be suspended, and Hartman will be on supervised probation. Also part of the deal, he must surrender his license to practice medicine as a physician’s assistant and is forbidden to practice medicine in any capacity for the rest of his life.
Hartman is scheduled to be sentenced on July 15.