Local doctor placed on probation by state

A Huntington Beach doctor was placed on probation late last month after the Medical Board of California found that he had been prescribing painkillers to his office manager and her husband without proper diagnosis, board documents allege.

Robert I. Blau, an ophthalmologist who first opened a private practice in Huntington Beach in 1961 and is a member of Clarity Eye Group, was placed on probation for 35 months beginning March 25, according to board records.

The board wrote that Blau prescribed painkillers to his office manager and her husband because they had complained of pain.

Blau told the medical board that his office manager “comes to me with all her problems” and acknowledged that while he had prescribed controlled medications for her, he never wrote notes in her medical record regarding those medications.

He said he prescribed her the pain pills because “she gets miserable and just can’t do too well,” according to the records.

“[She] doesn’t work too well and headachy, and that’s why I gave her the pain pills,” Blau was quoted as saying in the medical board documents. “She’d come to me and ask if she can have some medicine, and I’d say OK. And then, as far as I know, she called it in, and that’s all I know.”

The board also alleged Blau prescribed the office manager’s husband the opioid Norco. The board claimed the man cleaned Blau’s pool but was never paid for the jobs.

Blau told the board he occasionally saw the husband at his office but mainly talked with him over the phone, the documents state.

“[Blau] prescribed him the Norco without ever determining a minimal history, performing an examination, ordering laboratory tests, or, in fact, any determinative medical procedures whatsoever,” according to the medical records. “[Blau] admitted that he did not perform a physical examination of [the man] before prescribing Norco and could not say how many prescriptions he had authorized or when the last such prescription occurred.”

Blau told The Orange County Register he was “very unhappy” about the board’s decision.

“I felt like it was unreasonable, but I couldn’t fight it anymore ... because it was too expensive,” he told the Register.

Anthony Witteman, a Costa Mesa-based lawyer representing Blau in the case, declined to comment on the board’s decision.