YOUNGSTOWN — A Boardman podiatarist was scheduled to enter a guilty plea Wednesday to charges accusing him of improperly prescribing powerful painkillers to patients between 2013 and 2017.

But when his hearing began Wednesday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, Dr. James E. Prommersberger, 57, refused to plead guilty to all charges and permanently lose his medical license.

Prommersberger now is scheduled for a pretrial hearing Oct. 21 and a trial Jan. 11, 2021.

At the request of Judge Anthony D’Apolito, assistant Prosecutor Ken Cardinal laid out the details of the offer during Wednesday’s hearing.

Cardinal said Prommersberger was asked to plead guilty to the indictment — 38 counts of illegal processing of drug documents, 39 counts of drug trafficking and single counts of Medicaid fraud and grand theft.

He would have been required to pay about $3,500 restitution to the Ohio Department of Medicaid, about $1,600 to the Ohio Attorney General’s office for its work on the case and about $23,700 to the Ohio Board of Pharmacy for its investigation.

He also would have been sentenced to community service, but he would not have spent any time in jail or prison.

Cardinal said an expert who reviewed the medical records indicated the narcotic drugs Prommersberger prescribed to 30 patients from November 2013 to October 2017 were addictive to the patient, not medically necessary and not in compliance with medical standards.

Cardinal said prosecutors offered the plea because Prommersberger is “extremely bright and intelligent,” has a medical degree and appears to have had an unblemished record “until he started to do this.”

Cardinal said the case would take about four weeks to try.

Prommersberger’s attorney, J. Gerald Ingram, said his client is refusing to plead guilty “because he does not believe he did anything wrong.”

In December 2018, the Ohio State Medical Board placed Prommersberger on probation because in 2017 the West Virginia Board of Medicine previously had prohibited the doctor from prescribing benzodiazepines and limited his ability to prescribe opiates. The Ohio Medical Board also restricted Prommersberger’s ability to prescribe controlled substances.

erunyan@tribtoday.com