Doctors And Dentists Still Flooding U.S. With Opioid Prescriptions
July 17, 2020
Despite widespread devastation caused by America’s opioid epidemic, an investigation by NPR found that doctors and other health care providers still prescribe highly addictive pain medications at rates widely considered unsafe.
Public data, including new government studies and reports in medical literature, shows enough prescriptions are being written each year for half of all Americans to have one.
Patients still receive more than twice the volume of opioids considered normal before the prescribing boom began in the late 1990s.
This is a very inflammatory and nebulous headline!
Spearing as a retired M.D., I see physicians grossly reducing their opioid prescribing out of fear of the police state (State Medical Boards). I do not trust some “investigation by National Public Radio,” or their very nebulous accusations of wrongdoing by healthcare professionals.
Record keeping by medical boards can be quite skewed or wrongheaded. For example, an Emergency Room physician might write frequent, small amounts of pain meds. The Medical Board always has him / her documented as an Emergency Physician, by training, but, then that physician might change to practice in a Family Practice setting (this is very common). In the Family Practice setting the same physician writes fewer prescriptions, but as a larger supply, because he / she is now treating CHRONIC pain patients. The Medical Board can’t keep these variables straight, so they send written notice to the Emergency Physician that his / her prescriptive practices are statistically out-of line with other Emergency Physicians. This kind of confusion is very common…then NPR taps into bad statistics.
There has also been an unfortunate expansion of controlled substance prescribing authority to Physician Assistants and Nurse Practitioners. Thirty years ago opiate prescribing was strictly limited to Physicians and Dentists. Today, everybody gets to prescribe! Who steered this great responsibility in that direction? Too many cooks spoil the broth!
The pharmaceutical industry has developed (and pushed) more potent, addicting, and lethal chemicals onto the market in the last 30 years. Noteworthy among these are Oxycontin, Fentanyl, and MS-Contin. Oxycontin was developed and marketed for “cancer pain.” Purdue Pharmaceuticals, the manufacturer, was successful in getting the FDA to broaden the prescribing indications for Oxycontin to many other types of pain >>> more pills on the street.
Probably the biggest source of opioids are still
illegal drugs smuggled into the US from China, Mexico, and other countries. The traffickers are more sophisticated, using aircraft, shipping containers, and even submarines to smuggle drugs.
Most opioid deaths are probably from improper use of the drug or using
illegal opioids, like heroin. For example
chewing a highly potent Fentanyl patch, or combining opioids with alcohol or benzodiazepines (eg Valium) can be deadly.
for that!