Emergency Rooms Shut Down Doctor Shopping
I’d like to say that “doctor shopping” is one of the oldest tricks in the book when it comes to being able to get lots of highly potent and addictive medication. Addicts are very resourceful and many, once becoming addicted to opiates, realize how easy it is to stockpile medications and maximize the gains they can get from their doctor visits. For years, addicts have gone doctor to doctor, sometimes within the same day, to get multiple prescriptions for drugs like oxycodone, Xanax, and hydrocodone. Until the prescription monitoring program was implemented, it was almost like a free-for-all when it came to prescription drugs. In recent years, pharmacies nationwide have put together systems to monitor who fills what prescription and how often, leading many pharmacists to refuse medication fills to those they believe might be abusing the system or dealing with addiction. Because this behavior is so rampant, the City of Boston is trying a new program to help emergency rooms cut down on “doctor shopping.”
In Boston, a new program is being implemented to help ER’s identify patients who go from department to department and facility to facility looking for drugs. Brigham and Women’s Hospital is pioneering a program with the help of Dr. Scott Weiner that will allow ER’s to share data on regularly seen patients. Because so many people who are addicted to drugs, like opiates and benzodiazepines, visit emergency rooms on a regular basis, this program shows promise in making sure people aren’t inappropriately prescribed more medication, considering some of these addicts can visit several different ER’s in the matter of hours. Dr. Weiner said,
“Cases like this happen all the time.”
The program called PreManage ED will be able to alert healthcare providers when a person is habitually visiting emergency rooms and allow the attending physicians and nurses to treat the patient accordingly. With the new program in place, doctors will be notified if their patient habitually seeks emergency services in multiple different facilities.
Hopefully, this initiative will reduce the frequency of addicts shopping doctors to get drugs. As an ex-addict, I can testify to the fact of how easy it is to get drugs in an emergency room. If you don’t look like a typical addict and seem upstanding, you can go into virtually any emergency room and complain of specified or unspecified pain and get shot up with all sorts drugs. This type of system may prove to be extremely effective in handling the sheer number of addicts who visit ER’s just to get their next fix or make their withdrawals go away. At least from there, if they are identified as doctor shoppers or med seekers, they can be urged toward long-term treatment that just might save their lives.
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