Dr. Jonathan Tad Fogel, a onetime emergency room doctor at Kent Hospital, has been reprimanded for prescribing drugs online for people he had never met.

The state Board of Medical Licensure and Discipline found Fogel, 42, guilty of unprofessional conduct for writing prescriptions based on a questionnaire without establishing a doctor-patient relationship. The standards of good medical care require doctors to perform a physical examination and take a medical history before prescribing drugs.

In addition to accepting the reprimand, Fogel, who recently moved to New York, is required to take an ethics course and pay an administrative fee of $1,000.

According to a consent order that Fogel signed, the doctor went to work for a company called RX Partners, writing prescriptions for people who filled out an online questionnaire. Then Speedyrxdrugs.com would fill the prescription and mail the drugs to the patient.

Bruce W. McIntyre, the medical board’s lawyer, said Fogel was prescribing “the typical lifestyle drugs,” such as remedies for baldness or erectile dysfunction, but no controlled substances, and there was no evidence that any patient was harmed.

Fogel’s activities came to the attention of the board when a patient in Michigan brought one of Fogel’s prescriptions to a pharmacist rather than ordering the drug online. The pharmacist contacted the board, which launched an investigation.

Fogel is only the second doctor in Rhode Island to be caught prescribing online, but it is a serious problem around the country, McIntyre said. This case involved “lifestyle drugs” and a legitimate pharmacy, he said. But elsewhere doctors have prescribed controlled substances online, and online pharmacies have shipped counterfeit drugs from Third World countries, sometimes with deadly results. Doctors have gone to prison for such practices.

Fogel’s lawyer, Michael Sarli, could not be reached for comment.

ffreyer@projo.com