LEWISTON — For the second time in less than five years, Dr. Leslie Harding of Jay has been disciplined by the Maine Board of Licensure in Medicine.

The board issued a news release Thursday, noting it had restricted Harding’s medical license under a consent agreement signed by the doctor on Tuesday. He is now banned from prescribing controlled substances “under any circumstances” and shall not practice medicine “in an independent setting,” the agreement states.

A 1975 graduate of Georgetown University School of Medicine, Harding was first licensed to practice in Maine in 1978.

According to state records, Harding has admitted that the “Board has sufficient evidence to conclude that he acted in an incompetent and unprofessional manner while treating a patient whose cause of death was listed as deep vein thrombosis with pulmonary emboli due to obesity.” The condition is one in which a blood clot or clots form in a vein and a piece of the clot breaks off and travels to the lungs.

In addition, a contributing cause of the patient’s death was “acute intoxication due to multiple prescribed medications,” according to state records.

In December 2011, the board reprimanded Harding for incompetency and unprofessional conduct, restricting his license to prescribed pain medications.

In that case, Harding had been writing methadone prescriptions for a pregnant patient and failed to advise her obstetrical doctors that he was doing so. He also failed to conduct random urine screens and pill counts, failed to seek other appropriate medical treatments of chronic pain and failed to recognize escalating doses and early refills.

The board barred him from prescribing pain medications unless the patient was in a skilled nursing facility, a long-term care facility, in hospice care or was someone who has metastatic cancer.

According to the board, Harding closed his internal medicine practice on Church Street earlier this year.

[email protected]