While helping his boyhood pal Jeff George run lucrative prescription drug mills, Theodore Obermeyer's orders to doctors were simple: "Keep the patients happy." The favored amounts —180 to 240 oxycodone pills per month—would keep customers from deserting them for competing pill mills that offered more-generous supplies of the powerful painkillers, federal prosecutors said Obermeyer told physicians. If the doctors, often recruited on Craigslist, were stingy, Obermeyer would badger them to prescribe more, prosecutors said. Faced with stacks of evidence of the key role he played in the illicit operation, the 30-year-old West Palm Beach man pleaded guilty in federal court to one count of racketeering conspiracy. George, who tapped him to manage clinics in West Palm Beach and Hallandale Beach, pleaded guilty to the same charge last week. In return, prosecutors dropped three other felonies against them. Like George, Obermeyer also faces charges in state court in connection with the multimillion-dollar operation that prosecutors said is linked to more than 50 deaths.
In a social media landscape shaped by hashtags, algorithms, and viral posts, nurse leaders must decide: Will they let the narrative spiral, or can they adapt and join the conversation?
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