Almost two years ago, The Enquirer exposed a troubled Sharonville erectile dysfunction clinic as being run by Richard C. Neiswonger, a convicted felon who served 18 months in prison in 1998 after pleading guilty to money laundering and wire fraud.
The Physicians E.D. clinic has been shut down in Ohio but records show it has morphed across the country into two separate chains of similar clinics – one of which is run by a different convicted felon.
There is little evidence to suggest that much has changed beyond the clinics’ names, however. State boards license individual healthcare providers, but the boards typically don’t oversee clinics themselves and don’t require transparent documentation of ownership or business practices. That leaves clinics with tarnished reputations able to re-brand themselves and hire new doctors without making changes to their operation or their medications.
One employee says there’s been a change in name only for Physicians E.D., an outfit that’s been affiliated with at least four different business names in eight states since its launch around 2013. It’s so far been known as The Yale Clinic, Huntington Medical Clinic, Synergy Health Centers and Quality Care for Men. The Enquirer began investigating Physicians E.D. in early 2015 after patients complained about its location in Sharonville, Ohio, a Cincinnati suburb.
“What I discovered is that what they were selling before was a two-year package for about $6,000, we were now selling as a six- to nine-month program for $6,600,” said Eric Johansen, who worked for three months at a clinic near Mobile, Alabama, operating as Quality Care for Men. “So tell me what changed.”
Mark Johnson, a convicted felon who says he’s part-owner of Synergy Health Centers, insists that his company is no longer connected with Physicians E.D. or its parent company, The Yale Clinic.
“This is a totally different animal,” said Johnson, who pleaded guilty in July to federal charges of conspiracy and aiding and abetting securities fraud. “It is not about sales. Our business is patient-centric. Everything is done for the patient.”
Johnson declined to provide documentation detailing the circumstances of his purchase of Physicians E.D., nor did he respond to follow-up requests for comment. A URL he provided for his company does not work, but one for Physicians E.D. continues to operate and employees answering the phone at the number advertised there answer with the generic greeting, “Doctor’s office.”
Additionally, records for Synergy Health Centers, which Johnson said he operates, couldn’t be located with business registries in any of the states in which those clinics supposedly operate.
After The Enquirer’s initial investigations, the Sharonville location largely shuttered, but Physicians E.D. flourished in other cities. A new location in Atlanta opened, for example, and a news outlet affiliated with Gannett, The Enquirer’s parent company, ran a story critical of the clinic there.
A Physicians E.D. employee provided The Enquirer with internal emails that indicated the company’s owners were concerned about the company’s reputation after the newspaper’s stories. In one email, Neiswonger told his underlings that a Florida reporter was asking questions and that he feared “this could be another article like Cincinnati.”
Physicians E.D. notified its Pennsylvania patients that the company was closing in August 2016, according to documents provided by a patient. The letter stated that Synergy Health Centers would provide ongoing medical care to patients in Ft. Myers, Florida; Atlanta; Pittsburgh and Kansas City, Missouri.
However, official records in each of those states indicate that the change was in name only. None has official record of an erectile dysfunction clinic called Synergy Health Centers registering as an LLC there, while each has either The Yale Clinic or Physicians E.D.
There is a Synergy Health Centers registered in Tampa, Florida, but it appears to be an unaffiliated not-for-profit organization originally founded in 1995.
Synergy Health Centers is also registered in Towson, Maryland, where Physicians E.D.’s website still advertises a location. Synergy is registered to the same address and by the same agent as The Yale Clinic, Physicians E.D.’s parent company.
According to internal documents, including patient records provided to The Enquirer, the companies formed in Physicians E.D.’s wake also share something else in common with their supposedly shuttered predecessor: a pharmacy. Olympia Pharmacy of Florida has supplied the medication that patients are given to inject into their penises with a needle.
That pharmacy received a letter in February from the FDA alleging a “history of poor sterile practices” and “serious deficiencies in your practices for producing sterile drug products, which put patients at risk.”
Johnson said Synergy Health Centers quit using the Florida compounding pharmacy in recent months, but he declined to say what pharmacy replaced it.
Doctor oversight varies state by state. In Ohio, the medical board licenses individual doctors but not clinics, said Tessie Pollock, the board’s spokeswoman. And the board did take action against the two doctors operating out of the Sharonville erectile dysfunction clinic.
Drs. Everett Jones and Frank Welsh – a plastic surgeon and dermatologist – acknowledged to The Enquirer that their training consisted of reading a manual written by a Florida doctor they never met or spoke with directly. Neither had any experience treating erectile dysfunction, and one acknowledged finding the clinic job via a post on Craigslist.
The state board filed formal actions against both doctors in December 2015 alleging that they’d helped non-physician staffers treat patients. The complaints said the doctors let clinic staff determine treatment eligibility and dosing and even allowed them to administer the injection to patients’ penises.
Welsh was reprimanded in October; Jones consented to having his license permanently revoked in July.
Pollock, of the Ohio medical board, acknowledged that the board doesn’t regulate or license clinics. She said state law doesn’t grant the board that authority.
“It’s not a lack of concern,” Pollock said.
