How a University of Chicago-Trained Doctor Became the ‘Pill Mill Killer’

FACE OF EVIL –

June 7, 2024 – Over time, Paul Volkman, a doctor trained at the University of Chicago’s medical school, developed a bedside manner that ended many lives. He allegedly prescribed and dispensed millions of dosages of various drugs …He allegedly prescribed and dispensed millions of dosages of various drugs, including hydrocodone, oxycodone, alprazolam, diazepam, and carisoprodol throughout his career, according to FBI evidence presented at his 2011 trial.

Volkman is currently serving four consecutive life terms in an Arizona federal prison—the longest sentence handed down on any medical doctor during the country’s opiate epidemic. The crimes he committed is not lost on journalist Philip Eil, who authored Prescription for Pain: How a Once-Promising Doctor Became the “Pill Mill Killer.”

When Volkman wasn’t working at Chicago hospitals, including Bronzeville’s Mercy Hospital (1977-1979) and Michael Reese Hospital (1979-1981; the hospital shuttered in 2009), he made trips to southern Ohio, where the opioid epidemic would ravage communities.