A veterinarian in Ellsworth has agreed to pay $145,000 to resolve allegations that he inadequately stored or kept records for drugs used at his practice.
Alan K. Toothaker is accused of violating the Controlled Substances Act by keeping lax records, failing to properly restrict access to drugs used on animals in his care and not regularly conducting inventories on the drugs, according to federal officials.
The resolution represents the fifth time Toothaker has run afoul of regulators in the past 18 years. He previously has been disciplined by the state veterinary board for improperly treating animals in his care and for poor record-keeping.
Toothaker’s veterinary license requires him to register with the federal Drug Enforcement Agency and to maintain complete records to prevent potentially addictive drugs from being misused, federal officials said.
Toothaker did not respond to a message seeking comment Monday afternoon.
Officials have not accused Toothaker of allowing the drugs at his practice to be used for anything other than the care of his animal patients.
In May and July of 2023, while Toothaker was still on probation related to a state complaint that involved alleged insufficient record-keeping, federal officials were unable to audit Toothaker’s controlled substance management procedures at his registered practice because of inadequate record-keeping, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
A subsequent investigation revealed that Toothaker maintained minimal oversight of ordering, receiving and handling of medications, which created an opportunity for significant diversion of those medications, particularly Tramadol, federal officials said.
They also found that employees had unsupervised access to prescription medications that were stored in safes with non-controlled substances; that there was incomplete record-keeping for how those medications were managed; and there were continual refills of prescriptions.
Investigators also determined that Toothaker had transferred drugs to a second practice location that was not registered with regulators, they said.
Toothaker has been disciplined four times previously by state regulators over his veterinary practice.
In the spring of 2023, he was ordered to pay $2,000 in civil penalties and put on probation for two years for two complaints — one in which he misdiagnosed and did not keep adequate medical records for a cat who died a few days after treatment, and another in which he failed to provide requested records to state officials about a case in which he gave treatment advice over the phone to the owner of a dog that had ingested rodent poison.
Five years earlier, in 2018, Toothaker had been disciplined by state regulators for administering a dangerous combination of drugs to another dog. In that case, and again in 2023, Toothaker was ordered to undergo continuing education for veterinary practices.
Toothaker also was disciplined by state regulators in 2007 after he removed only one testicle from another dog, though he had been expected to remove both, and he failed to tell the dog’s owner after the surgery that he had not removed both. He also failed to keep proper records for the dog’s condition, the procedure and its outcome, regulators said.
