AUGUSTA (AP) – The state medical licensing board has suspended the license of a retired physician from Blue Hill for violating the board’s policy on prescribing drugs over the Internet.

The Board of Licensure in Medicine suspended the license of Dr. Virginia Biddle, 76, out of concerns for patient safety, said Randall Manning, the board’s executive director. Biddle has been writing hundreds of prescriptions a week for patients she has never met, he said.

“Without the patient being seen, it’s impossible to make a diagnosis,” Manning said.

Biddle, 76, called the decision unfair and said she will appeal.

Biddle, who retired from her practice in Ellsworth about two years ago, said she has been countersigning prescriptions for people seeking to save money by buying their medications from Canadian pharmacies.

Most of the prescriptions are written by American doctors for American patients and then mailed or faxed to Canadian pharmacies to be filled, she said.

“All of these people have been seen by a doctor recently,” she said.

Because Canadian law requires that prescriptions be signed by a physician licensed in Canada, some pharmacies have contracted with “middle man” companies that recruit U.S. doctors with Canadian licenses to sign the prescriptions via fax or e-mail, she said.

Biddle said she has been licensed to write prescriptions in Canada for about four years and was recruited about two years ago by Business Services Inc. in North Carolina. She is paid about $1 for each prescription she countersigns, she said.

“This whole issue (of electronic prescribing) is treated differently in every state,” Biddle said. “Some states, like Massachusetts, sanction and enable the ordering of drugs from Canada. Maine has trouble sorting out how they think and feel about it.”

Martin York, who Biddle said is her boss at Business Services, declined comment.

Biddle said most of the prescriptions she has filled have been for chronic conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes and arthritis.

AP-ES-11-23-05 1140EST