HAYSVILLE ? Patients of a Kansas physician accused of running a “pill mill” plan to protest the state’s decision to suspend his license.

Patients plan to hold a rally at Dr. Stephen Schneider’s Haysville clinic on Friday – the deadline for the Schneider Medical Clinic’s doors to close under an order from Administrative Judge Edward Gaschler. He was acting on a petition by the Kansas Board of Healing Arts when he temporarily suspended Schneider’s license on Tuesday.

Although the order means the clinic can’t treat patients, it can give them their medical records until it has to shut its doors Friday. Schneider Medical Clinic has about 1,000 patients.

Schneider and his wife, nurse Linda Schneider, were indicted last month on 34 charges, including conspiracy, unlawful distribution of a controlled substance, health care fraud, illegal money transactions and money laundering. They are being held without bond.

Although they are not charged with killing any patients, the indictment links the Schneiders to 56 overdose deaths in the past five years of patients who had obtained pain medication at the clinic. The indictment alleges the Schneiders are directly responsible for only four of those deaths.

Linda Schneider’s sister, Pat Hatcher, said Gaschler’s decision hurts the clinic’s patients.

“People are coming in scared to death that they are going to die and don’t know what to do,” Hatcher said in a telephone interview Wednesday.

Patients wanted to stage a sit-in at the clinic Tuesday night, Hatcher said, but she discouraged that effort because of cold temperatures.

“I didn’t want them there all night and people dying on us outside the clinic,” she said.

Hatcher said patients plan to bring protest signs to Friday’s rally and hope to attract media attention to their plight. The rally will start at 5 p.m. and last a couple of hours. Other protests will be planned later at the courthouse.

Patients insist they will hold Friday’s rally regardless of the weather, she said.

“They said they are already going to be dying, and they are already going to be in pain,” Hatcher said.

The Schneiders have insisted they are innocent, and their supporters argue the indictment is part of a national effort to crackdown on doctors who prescribe pain medication.

“They are turning all these patients into orphans because nobody will touch them,” Hatcher said.

Schneider Medical Clinic has faced scrutiny for several years, with federal agents raiding it on Sept. 13, 2005, and March 28, 2006.

Also, the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services in 2005 sought to terminate Stephen Schneider’s services with several state-paid medical services. However, Schneider sued the agency and won a court order on July 8, 2005, restraining SRS and allowing the clinic to continue seeing Medicaid patients.

Numerous malpractice lawsuits also have been filed against Schneider.

The federal indictment handed down in December created a political firestorm. Lawmakers held hearings demanding to know why the Board of Healing Arts did not act sooner.

The board has said it held off on taking action at the request of federal prosecutors who were building a case against the doctor. The U.S. attorney’s office has denied that it asked the board to defer its investigation.

“They have their position and we have ours, and it sounds like maybe we don’t agree,” said Mark Stafford, the board’s attorney. “Ultimately, the disagreement doesn’t have a whole lot of impact on the merits of their case or ours. It goes more to the finger-pointing going on by so many different factions.”