What's next for Dr. Wiggins?

The Meridian Township Board of Trustees has added a vote to the August 2012 primary election ballot on whether to allow a controversial property rezoning for a doctor who wants to open a medical marijuana certification clinic.

The clinic can’t open until the residentially zoned property is changed to professional office. But the doctor can apply for a special use permit that would allow her to operate at the location between now and the vote, the township director of planning said.

The doctor is Shannon Wiggins, who is also facing eight counts by the state of allegedly overprescribing pharmaceuticals. In one case, the state says a patient died.

Wiggins declined to comment, her receptionist said.

Wiggins is seeking to rezone 4133 Okemos Road in order to open a clinic that would combine urgent care treatment and medical marijuana certification exams. The township board voted 4-2 on March 1 to grant the rezoning. A successful petition drive forced the issue to an election. The 2012 primary is the first township-wide election.

Mark Kieselbach, director of community planning and development in Meridian Township, said Wiggins can apply for a special use permit to open her clinic while she waits. The property is zoned residential, and Wiggins wants it zoned professional office.

“Dr. Wiggins could apply and seek a special use permit and have a clinic,” Kieselbach said. “She could have done that initially if she didn’t want to go through the zoning process.”

Kieselbach said getting a special use permit and not changing from residential “doesn’t have quite as much marketability” for resale than if the property was rezoned to professional office.

The special use permit would be granted by the township’s nine-member planning commission and would not go before the Board of Trustees, Kieselbach said. He added that a special use permit doesn’t expire.

After the township board granted the rezoning, two Okemos-based attorneys, Stephen Schultz and William Fahey, organized a successful petition drive to force the rezoning issue onto the ballot.

City Pulse reported last week that Wiggins faces eight counts of “negligence,” incompetence” and “selling, prescribing, giving away or administering drugs for other than lawful diagnostic or therapeutic purposes” from the state Department of Community Health.

Wiggins owns Alternative Choice Clinic at 2310 E. Michigan Ave. and 4415 N. Grand River Ave. in Lansing. 

Township officials said the allegations against Wiggins and the rezoning are separate issues.

“We (the township board) don’t regulate how people practice medicine. That should be at the state level,” Meridian Township Supervisor Susan McGillicuddy said. “That issue should never come before the Board of Trustees. All we look at is the land use.” 

As for the allegations, it is undetermined when and if Wiggins will face disciplinary action. Joy Yearout, a spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office, said Wiggins will be invited to a private “compliance conference” with the six-member disciplinary subcommittee of the Board of Osteopathic Medicine and Surgery. Yearout said typically “there is an agreement of whether she admits to some of the allegations” at this meeting. However, Wiggins can object to any and all of the allegations. That would lead to a public hearing before an administrative law judge in which both sides — Wiggins and the 11-member Board of Osteopathic Medicine and Surgery — make their cases, Yearout said.

While the pending complaint does not call into question Wiggins’ medical marijuana exams, local attorney Matt Newburg said it leaves the door open for that part of her business to be further scrutinized by prosecutors.

Newburg, who specializes in medical marijuana law, said the only basis in which doctors can be investigated for improper medical marijuana recommendations is if no “bona fide” patient-to-doctor relationship is established. While Newburg said “doctors engaged in a bona fide relationship receive the same protection as a patient and caregiver,” he added that the pending allegations could affect those who got their recommendations from Wiggins and are awaiting approval from the state.

“If she loses her license for overprescribing medication, the analogy can be made that she made the same procedure for medical marijuana patients,” Newburg said. “It would leave the door open for a prosecutor to say she might have not engaged in a bona fide doctor/patient relationship.”

However, anyone who may have to represent one of Wiggins’ medical marijuana patients in court should note that once a card is issued by the state, “that doctor is deemed engaged in a bona fide doctor/patient relationship,” Newburg said.