Law enforcement officers gather in front of the office of Dr. Fred Gott on Monday, Feb. 25, 2013, to execute a search warrant of his Bowling Green office. The Kentucky State Police, the DEA, the FBI, the Cabinet for Health and Family Services and the Office of the Inspector General and Warren County Drug Task Force are involved in the case. (Photo by Miranda Pederson/Daily News)

Four weeks have been set aside beginning next month to complete a federal trial involving a Bowling Green doctor accused of improperly prescribing drugs, leading to the deaths of three patients.

C. Fred Gott, 63, appeared Tuesday in U.S. District Court with his attorney, David Broderick, for the final pretrial conference in his criminal case.

A longtime Bowling Green cardiologist who also provided pain management services, Gott is charged in a federal indictment with three counts of unlawful distribution and dispensing of controlled substance resulting in serious injury or death; health care fraud resulting in death; 14 counts of unlawful distribution and dispensing of controlled substances; 31 counts of health care fraud; and conspiracy to distribute and dispense controlled substances for no legitimate medical purpose.

The trial is set for Sept. 13 in Bowling Green.

U.S. District Judge Greg Stivers said he anticipates summoning around 60 potential jurors for the trial.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Mac Shannon said he has amassed a list of about 50 prosecution witnesses for the trial, but he does not anticipate calling all of them to testify.

“I think we will be able to reduce that number some depending on rulings,” said Shannon, adding that he anticipated needing two weeks to present his case against Gott.

Broderick said he would be relying in part on testimony from expert witnesses located in North Carolina and Georgia to help jurors through a complex case.

“There are, conservatively, tens of thousands of documents if not hundreds of thousands,” Broderick said.

A number of motions regarding whether to admit certain types of evidence are pending before Stivers, who did not make any rulings Tuesday.

Shannon has filed notice of an intent to introduce records from The Medical Center and TriStar Greenview Regional Hospital regarding complaints against Gott related to his practice as a cardiologist and the decisions both hospitals made to restrict him from performing invasive procedures at either facility.

The prosecutor argues that the records show how Gott transitioned his practice to pain management, which Shannon asserts Gott was not qualified to do, and turned to fraudulent billing practices to replace lost revenue.

Broderick claims these records are not relevant to the question of whether Gott is guilty of the criminal counts against him, and he has moved to exclude those records and several other records from the evidence.

Stivers, who began reviewing the pending motions Tuesday, appeared to question the value of the hospital records as admissible items.

“My impression is that the reasons for the revocation of (Gott’s) privileges don’t seem to me to mean a whole lot other than those privileges were revoked or restricted,” Stivers said Tuesday.

The deaths or serious injuries prosecutors want to tie to Gott are that of a patient who died in 2011 after being prescribed fentanyl, a patient who died in 2012 after being prescribed methadone and a patient who died in 2013 to whom Gott is accused of prescribing controlled substances unnecessarily.