Jennifer Cooper (Photo courtesy of Baxter County Sheriff’s Office)
A plea of not guilty was entered during a session of Baxter County Circuit Court Monday for a former hospital worker charged with forging prescriptions for a weight loss drug that is a Schedule IV controlled substance.
Forty-year-old Jennifer Cooper of Salem, who worked at the Fulton County Hospital and ran the IT department for a time after Baxter Health took over management of the facility, is charged with 42 counts of forgery.
The forged prescriptions were written in the name of a doctor practicing in Salem for Phentermine.
The drug, which is available by prescription only, is used for obese patients and serves to suppress the appetite.
While the potential for abuse is lower with Phentermine than with many other drugs, it is chemically like an amphetamine and does carry a risk of dependence and abuse, particularly when overused.
Cooper was said to have used the name of the doctor in Salem to authorize the prescriptions and then filled them at Walmart and Walgreen’s pharmacies in Mountain Home.
The installation of a new “cloud based” electronic system at the Fulton County hospital on which doctors call in prescriptions brought the scheme to light.
Officials saw that only one doctor continued to use the old system, and he was well known to write prescriptions for his patients eschewing any electronic methods.
The Phentermine prescriptions on which his name was used without his knowledge were written for Cooper and members of her family, according to the probable cause affidavit.
When investigators went to Cooper’s residence in Salem, she was said to have admitted using the doctor’s name on the forged prescriptions.
She told investigators she was not sure how many prescriptions she had forged but admitted to doing it for about six months.
Cooper told investigators her husband knew nothing about her activity.
She gave investigators permission to check her computer and cellphone and showed authorities the PDF file she used to produce the fake prescriptions.
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