An executive at Florida Hospital Oceanside is accused of fraudulently using other people’s information, including his child’s, to get prescription pills, officials say.
Howard Perch, 50, was arrested Tuesday at his home in Ormond Beach and is facing charges of fraudulently obtaining controlled substances, trafficking in hydrocodone and concealing information to obtain a prescription, records show.
He has since been released from the Volusia County Branch Jail on bail.
Perch was named administrator of the Ormond Beach hospital in January 2015, according to a news release posted on Florida Hospital’s website. Before that, he served as the executive director of rehabilitation services for Florida Hospital Memorial Medical Center.
He was in that role when officials started investigating him in July 2014, after a Walgreens pharmacist received an odd prescription one weekend ordering hydrocodone for Perch, an arrest report states.
The pharmacist said it’s rare to get call-in prescriptions on the weekends, so she contacted the ordering physician, who claimed he didn’t write it, the report states. The pharmacist called Ormond Beach police, who eventually got the Drug Enforcement Administration involved.
Agents said they found Perch used his child’s information on at least two occasions to get more pills that had been prescribed by the same doctor, who again didn’t have any record of ever writing the prescriptions.
Investigators also accused Perch of “doctor shopping,” saying he was getting pain pills, including oxycodone, from two different doctors at the same time.
Jeffrey Walsh, assistant special agent in charge of the DEA Central Florida Region, said in a news release that Perch’s arrest shows how the “perils associated with the illegal diversion of pharmaceuticals drugs has and can infiltrate all levels of society.”
Florida Hospital didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
sallen@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5417
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