Tuesday, April 26, 2011

National Strategy to Reduce Prescription Drug Abuse





    1. require training on responsible opiate prescribing
    2. require Pharma to develop education materials for providers and patients
    6. increased use of written patient-provider agreements
    7. facilitate public education campaigns, especially targeting parents
    2. support reauthorization of NASPER, which funds PDMPs
    4. reduce "doctor shopping"
    3. get Pharma involved
    1. increase training for law enforcement personnel and prosecutors
    2. aggressive action against "pill mills" and inappropriate prescribers
    4. increase surveillance of prescription drug trafficking



Anonymous said...

Thanks, but no thanks. I enjoy enough stinkeye from my pharmacist, drug-benefit provider, Primary care doc and psychiatrist over 1 SSRI and 1 benzo.

Now Uncle Sam wants to help. Great.

"Keep fighting that war on drugs" should be the new "Keep f*cking that chicken."

moviedoc said...

"Something must be done."

Anybody heard about addiction treatment? Like buprenorphine?

Sarebear said...

I went to the doc on Monday with my daughter and we both have a bacterial lung infection, with HORRIBLE coughs. It used to be that he'd prescribe a cough syrup with codeine or something similar in it, but after asking if the cough kept us up at night (my clonazepam helps compensate, though I've increased the dose for the duration of this illness to what it was prescribed at, usually I take half the dose), but my daughter is up quite alot in the night coughing her head off and worse because of the cough.

My impression was that he was being VERY cautious with narcotic prescribing due to the way these things are monitored but that's just a guess on my part.

I'm afraid that other situations will also come up where the patients will end up suffering more because the docs won't want to prescribe to relieve symptoms.

word verify: tridose ha ha

Dinah said...

Dear Sarebear:

I used to keep a bottle of cough medicine with codeine on hand for those middle of the night coughs. The last time I asked the pediatrician for a refill, he told me that the latest studies show that codeine does not suppress coughs (or something to that effect)...counter to all I knew, but I looked it up, and so it was.

The codeine dose in cough medicine is quiet low, and it's not a chronically-renewing script so I don't think this is what the FDA is after. It's the high dose narcotics that people get from 4 different doctors and then die on from overdoses or sell that is the problem.

Sunny CA said...

I would rather leave the government out of it because extreme measures like these are sure to end up keeping people in pain from having treatment for their pain. I periodically have severe back pain and I am thankful my internist gives me Vicodin for it. I was given "muscle relaxants" and other types of pain medication for it in the past that did absolutely nothing for pinched nerve pain. When I have severe pain I can hardly stand to live in my body. I never take the medication unless I need it. I'd hate to not have access to it.

Sarebear said...

Thanks, Dinah, that's very good to know and now I am more informed!

a psychiatrist who learned from veterans said...

Being able to get Claims History with my eprescribing service is helpful. Maybe somehow this will make it easier to communicate with the feds about eprescribing.

Anonymous said...

Here's a great discussion


Specifically, note the discussion of Risk Benefit Ratios

What was that saying? Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely? I think that was it.

This has nothing to do with science, rationality, logic or mindfulness and everything to do with someone who has an axe to grind... that is how power works, in case you are wondering.

Someone in power gets a buzz up their butt, or gets offended by someone, and all hell breaks loose. It is called the "Hoover Syndrome."

Push down on oxycontin, up goes heroin, etc. Push down on heroin, up goes heroin, oxycontin, etc. Demand cannot be influenced by alleged supply, because supply will always find a way.

And, talk about deaths from misuse of drugs -- really? What was that about alcohol and nicotine being assigned to Schedule II?