State Seeks to Revoke Newhall Doctor’s License : Medicine: Prosecutors allege that Dr. Sandra Soho operated a ‘pill mill,’ accepting $25 consultation fees in return for drug prescriptions.

State medical authorities are seeking to revoke or suspend the license of a Newhall physician accused of deliberately addicting patients to painkillers and profiting from their frequent need for new prescriptions.

Dr. Sandra Soho, who was Dr. Stanley Soho before a 1986 sex-change operation, was charged by Los Angeles prosecutors last year with two felony counts of illegally prescribing controlled substances after she was arrested by sheriff’s narcotics officers.

Prosecutors allege that Soho operated a “pill mill” out of her office, deliberately addicting patients and profiting from their frequent visits to obtain new prescriptions. One patient was given prescriptions for 900 codeine pills in a single month, authorities said.

Soho, who faces trial June 17 in San Fernando Superior Court, has pleaded innocent to the charges. If convicted, she could be sentenced to up to three years and eight months in prison.

The doctor was barred from practicing medicine in California from 1981-84 after she failed repeated oral examinations of her medical knowledge and was declared grossly incompetent by state medical officials.

After passing an exam in 1984, she was placed on five years’ probation. Soho’s license was fully restored when the probationary period ended in 1989.

In 1986, Soho bought the practice of Dr. Milos Klvana, a home birthing advocate who was sentenced last year to 53 years to life in prison after being convicted of second-degree murder in the deaths of eight infants and a fetus.

In an administrative complaint filed last month, the Medical Board of California charged that Soho over-prescribed addictive drugs to four patients, wrote false prescriptions and prescribed controlled drugs to known addicts.

Soho faces loss or suspension of her license if the medical board charges are upheld by an administrative law judge at a public hearing. The license revocation proceedings will be conducted independently of her criminal trial. She can appeal any judgment against her license to Superior Court, and penalties cannot be imposed until all appeals are exhausted.

In one case, state medical authorities said, Soho prescribed about 4,300 tablets of the painkiller Vicodin over a 13-month period--more than twice the recommended daily dosage--to a patient that she knew was selling or giving the drugs away.

Soho also prescribed more than 2,000 tablets of Vicodin to another patient without giving her a medical exam, officials charged.

Neither Soho nor her attorney, Larry M. Baker, could be reached for comment Tuesday.

Los Angeles Deputy Dist. Atty. Bradford E. Stone said there was no evidence that Soho received kickbacks from local pharmacies. He said she profited by charging patients a $25 consultation fee whenever she wrote a prescription.