SARANAC LAKE — A physician is no longer working at Adirondack Medical Center after he pleaded guilty to illegally prescribing opioids to patients in Virginia pain management clinics without a “legitimate medical purpose,” allegedly leading to the overdose death of one patient.

Duane Dixon, 64, was a pain medicine specialist at Adirondack Medical Center until recently. He pleaded guilty on Oct. 3 to two counts — one for the unlawful distribution of opioids, including fentanyl, oxycodone, hydrocodone, morphine and buprenorphine, and another for healthcare fraud.

Dixon moved from Virginia to the Adirondacks in 2019 and began working at Adirondack Medical Center.

“While we do not comment on personnel matters, we can confirm that Dr. Dixon is no longer employed by Adirondack Health,” Adirondack Health spokesman Matt Scollin wrote in an email. Adirondack Health manages the Adirondack Medical Center.

Scollin did not respond when asked if Dixon was terminated by the hospital or if he resigned. Scollin also did not respond when asked if Dixon left his job at AMC, or was terminated, during the trial — which began in 2021 — or whether his departure from AMC happened more recently.

Dixon’s defense attorney John Fishwick did not respond to a request for comment.

Dixon was a physician at a chain of pain management clinics in Virginia operated by L5 Medical Holdings. According to federal investigators, the man who purchased these clinics in 2014 — John Gregory Barnes, 57, of South Carolina — was a former mortgage broker with no medical training, who saw a “recession proof” business model.

Barnes pleaded guilty to a federal drug and health care fraud conspiracy in July.

According to a press release on his guilty plea from the Western District of Virginia U.S. Attorney’s Office, after he began operating these clinics, they became “more focused” on prescribing opioids.

“Barnes and L5 operated the clinics in a manner that prioritized revenue maximization over patient care,” the press release states. “Providers (such as Dixon) were encouraged to limit patient visits to 15 minutes and to see as many as 30 patients per day.”

After eight years of federal investigations, Dixon and several other employees of L5 Medical Holdings have been charged with conspiring to distribute opioids without a legitimate medial purpose at L5’s pain care centers across Virginia between 2014 and 2019.

Dixon’s plea has not been accepted by U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Dillon yet and he has not been sentenced. If his plea dead is accepted, he faces up to six years in prison without the chance of parole — lower than the prison time would be if he was found guilty of these crimes in a trial.

Dixon is in the process of surrendering his medical licenses.

He agreed to “never again practice medicine” in his guilty plea.

A document from the state Department of Health dated for Oct. 19 states that his name will be “stricken from the roster of physicians in the state of New York” due to medical misconduct and “moral unfitness.”

Dixon is supposed to notify all of his patients and refer them to another physician. His name has been removed from Adirondack Health’s “Pain Management” page.

Dixon also agreed to forfeit $200,000 to the U.S. government which “was obtained directly or indirectly” through the crimes he admitted to.

The plea deal Dixon agreed to called for the dismissal of charges that he distributed opioids to a patient who overdosed and died.

In May 2015, the indictment states he prescribed fentanyl and oxycodone to an unnamed female patient, identified only as “T.P.” in court documents, who died within 24 hours of filling the prescription as a result of using the substances.

The indictment carried a third count of making a false statement to the Drug Enforcement Administration relating to this patient. It says he told DEA agents that T.P. had an incident at the clinic and needed resuscitation, and that she showed signs of intravenous drug use. But he told agents she was discharged as a patient afterward and before her death.

The indictment said this is false and she had follow-up appointments scheduled at the clinic at the time of her death.

In documents from a previous case where Dixon was charged with similar charges — but the case was dismissed in 2021 — investigators stated that they began investigating Dixon in 2015 after they were tipped off by pharmacies around Lynchburg, Virginia that he was prescribing “unusually large amounts of narcotics.”

“The conduct here is beyond the pale,” U.S. Attorney Christopher Kavanaugh said in a statement on Barns’ guilty plea. “We have a record-high number of Virginians fighting opioid addiction while this defendant intentionally prioritized profit over genuine patient care.”

“Our fight against addiction and the opioid epidemic isn’t just with the drugs or major pharmaceutical companies, but also with the individuals who take advantage of addiction, of others’ pain, for their personal gain,” Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares said in a statement on Barns’ guilty plea. “Monetizing addiction is immoral and illegal.”