INDIANAPOLIS­ — Middletown Dr. Phillip D. Foley’s license was suspended Thursday after regulators ruled him a clear and present danger for prescribing narcotics that the state says contributed to the deaths of nine patients.

The Indiana Medical Licensing Board unanimously voted to suspend Foley’s license for 90 days — an emergency step that Deputy Attorney General Michael Minglin said would be followed up with a hearing to revoke the license. A date for that hearing has not been set.

Foley boycotted the hearing on the advice of his attorney, who also did not attend.

Before the hearing began, Foley held court outside the room in the state office building hallway, surrounded by dozens of patients, supporters, staff and reporters.

“These people are so dead-set about taking my license that they don’t care about these people,” Foley said.

“It’s a distortion,” he said of the case against him.

Asked about his decision not to attend his hearing, Foley said, “Why go in and be beat down and berated and go through a bunch of frustration?”

Inside the hearing room, the state introduced as its only evidence the medical records and pathology reports on nine patients, identified only by their initials, who died over the last five years after receiving painkillers from Foley.

Minglin called only one witness, Dr. W.S. Minore, a pain-management doctor from Rockford, Ill. Minore was hired by the attorney general’s office to review the records of those who died.

“He was super-therapeutic and toxic,” Minore said of one of Foley’s patients who had been prescribed a “cocktail” of the narcotics Vicodin, Xanax and Soma. He said pathology reports found the patient had five times the therapeutic level of Vicodin in his system.

Case by case, Minore testified that Foley and his staff had failed to properly examine or screen patients before prescribing painkillers. In many cases, he said no non-narcotic medications were prescribed that he said would have been more beneficial. In some cases, Minore said that Foley continued to prescribe medications after overdoses.

“In my review of the records, I could not understand why patients were being prescribed (what) they were being prescribed,” Minore told the board. He said Foley prescribed short-acting, addictive medications for people with chronic pain conditions.

The board suspended Foley’s license after it rejected his request to unconditionally surrender it. Minglin told the board that allowing Foley, 73, to surrender his license would not have barred him from seeking a license in another state.

“The facts laid out today during the hearing clearly indicate that lives were at risk and an emergency suspension of Dr. Foley’s medical license was necessary,” Attorney General Greg Zoeller said Thursday.

“The growing number of overdoses as a result of overly prescribed narcotics is alarming. While professional pain management for those who suffer chronic pain is essential and requires a highly trained medical professional, any licensed medical professional who poses a threat to public safety will be subject to investigation and disciplinary action by the State of Indiana.”

Foley’s supporters stood by him Thursday. Some patients said he had diagnosed ailments that other doctors had missed. Some praised his compassion. A few shed tears and hugged Foley after the board’s decision.

Pam Keesling-Barber, who makes referrals from Foley’s office, said no patients had received prescriptions without blood tests and screenings. She said many of those who died took medications at higher doses than prescribed and mixed alcohol or street drugs. Foley “has no idea what they’re doing out there,” she said.

She said she’s concerned about what will happen next with Foley’s more than 2,000 patients.

“A lot of doctors aren’t going to take patients because they’re his patients,” she said. “They’re being turned away.”

Contact Dave Stafford: 648-4250, dave.stafford@heraldbulletin.com