Study Finds ‘Doctor Shopping’ Uncommon - National Pain Report - National Pain Report

Less than one percent of patients – about 135,000 people — who purchase prescription painkillers in the U.S. were classified as "doctor shoppers" in the first national study of opioid prescriptions and sales records.But while they make up only a small proportion of the 48 million patients who are prescribed painkillers, researchers say patients who visit multiple doctors and pharmacies to obtain opioids are having an outsized impact on the system. Federal and state officials have cracked down on the illicit use of painkillers by making it harder for patients to obtain opioids – even ones with legitimate prescriptions.The study found that the vast majority of patients prescribed opioids did not abuse the drugs or visit a suspicious number of doctors."We estimate that a small outlying population of approximately one of every 143 patients who purchased opioids from retail pharmacies in 2008 obtained these prescriptions from a suspiciously large number of different prescribers. Patients in this population got an average of 32 prescriptions from an average of 10 different physicians," wrote researchers Douglas McDonald and Kenneth Carlson of Abt Associates.The study, published online in the journal PLOS ONE, analyzed records for over 146 million prescriptions dispensed in 2008 for opioids containing buprenorphine, codeine, fentanyl, hydrocodone, methadone, oxycodone, oxymorphone, propoxyphene, or tramadol.The drugs were prescribed by over 900,000 doctors, dispensed...
Source: Psychology of Pain - Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs