Members of the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners said last week they won’t object if or when a primary care physician in the state prescribes ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19.
Board members said this last Wednesday at a Senate Government Operations Committee meeting.
“This is to clear up internet stories and rumors, innuendo, gossip, or anything else,” said Committee Chair and Senator Kerry Roberts (R-Springfield) during last week’s hearing, after board members testified.
“The final word from both the Department of Health and the Board of Medical examiners is if a primary care physician who is otherwise considered an outstanding physician — in other words, not under investigation for anything else, and their professional credentials aren’t questioned — if they make a decision to prescribe something off-label for the treatment of COVID-19 then they are free to do that without any threat of investigation or professional sanction by the Board of Medical Examiners and the Department of Health.”
Committee member and State Senator Janice Bowling (R-Tullahoma) said several doctors who had prescribed ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 had contacted her. She said those doctors “had received letters” and feared state officials would punish them for prescribing the alternative treatments that had created widespread controversy among the medical community and beyond, beginning in the spring of 2020.
Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners President Melanie Blake said she and other board members had neither approved nor endorsed any specific protocol regarding how to treat COVID-19.
Bowling asked whether doctors in Tennessee may use their best judgement as they treat patients afflicted with COVID-19.
Blake said she did not think “it would be the board’s role specifically to dictate any type of protocol like that.”
“The process, with respect to a complaint, if a complaint is filed then a licensee is notified of an investigation. A notification itself is just part of the process,” Blake said.
“Where that investigation goes and how it is concluded, all that process takes place before board members are ever aware of it. We don’t participate in that part of the process at all.”
Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners Office of General Counsel David Silvus said if someone complained about a doctor for prescribing ivermectin then his office would open a complaint — but the complaint likely won’t go anywhere.
“So long as the medication isn’t in and of itself dangerous to a patient,” Silvus said.
“Some people may say my doctor is prescribing lots of opioids to treat a common cold [and] that might be different, but from a purely off-label use of medications. That is not a violation.”
Board members said doctors discuss risks and benefits with patients, just as they do with any other off-label use of a medication.
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star and The Georgia Star News. Follow Chris on Facebook, Twitter, Parler, and GETTR. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Hydroxychloroquine” by National Institutes of Health.
