The fight for reinstatement: Advocating for early opportunities for excluded health care professionals battling opioid use disorder
I’ll begin by saying that I have a diagnosis of opioid use disorder (OUD) secondary to PTSD. I began diverting Norco from a pharmacy with which my hospice company had a contract. At the time, I had access to various narcotics as an RN case manager, which was quite concerning. This environment became a breeding
Read more…
The fight for reinstatement: Advocating for early opportunities for excluded health care professionals battling opioid use disorder originally appeared in KevinMD.com. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - June 28, 2023 Category: General Medicine Authors: Chris Kyzar, RN Tags: Policy Nursing Source Type: blogs
From addiction to exclusion: a physician ’ s struggle for redemption
Many consequences can happen to a physician who has faced the disease of addiction. One of the worst is to be placed on the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) exclusion list, which prohibits billing for both Medicare and Medicaid. During my hydrocodone addiction, I diverted the medication by writing prescriptions to my patients, who
Read more…
From addiction to exclusion: a physician’s struggle for redemption originally appeared in KevinMD.com. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - April 16, 2023 Category: General Medicine Authors: Jeffrey L. Fraser, MD Tags: Physician Primary Care Source Type: blogs
A few slow-paced breaths are enough to significantly reduce physiological stress
Welcome to a new edition of SharpBrains’ e‑newsletter, sharing important brain & mental health news plus a couple fun brain teasers to test your mental self-rotation skills.
#1. Study: Education and lifestyle helped over a million older Americans avoid serious cognitive problems in 2017
Let’s kickstart 2022 with some good news: “The prevalence of serious cognitive problems in the US population aged 65 and older declined from 12.2% to 10.0% between 2008 and 2017. Had the prevalence remained at the 2008 levels, there would have been an additional 1.13 million older Americans with serious cognitive problems in 201...
Source: SharpBrains - January 31, 2022 Category: Neuroscience Authors: SharpBrains Tags: Brain/ Mental Health SharpBrains Monthly eNewsletter Technology & Innovation ADHD-medication Akili Interactive APA Big Health Breathing Cognitive Neuroscience cognitive problems consumer technology digital therapeutics Headspace He Source Type: blogs
On schools, mental health, digital surveillance, student privacy and parental input
Op-Ed: School surveillance on students’ laptops will not help solve the youth mental health crisis (Los Angeles Times):
In the past year, school districts in California and elsewhere have contracted with digital surveillance companies to spy on students at school and home, citing the need for mental health support during the pandemic.
Despite being a vigilant and involved parent, I found out only recently that my own kids, who attend high school in the Corona-Norco Unified School District, have been under constant digital surveillance for the past year.
Gaggle.net has a contract with Corona-Norco to monitor email account...
Source: SharpBrains - January 5, 2022 Category: Neuroscience Authors: SharpBrains Tags: Brain/ Mental Health Technology & Innovation digital surveillance Gaggle mental health crisis Neuroethics Neurotechnology parental notification Source Type: blogs
How drug distributors contributed to the opioid crisis
A recent headline in my neighborhood newspaper read,“A Dentist Became a Top Opioid Buyer in W. Va. Now a Drug Firm Faces Penalty for Ignoring Red Flags.” The drug firm sent 25,400 hydrocodone pills and 3,600 Xanax to one Huntington, WV area dentist. The DEA raided the dentist’s office and shut it down. TheRead more …How drug distributors contributed to the opioid crisis originally appeared inKevinMD.com. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - December 28, 2021 Category: General Medicine Authors: < span itemprop="author" > < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/rebecca-thaxton" rel="tag" > Rebecca Thaxton, MD < /a > < /span > Tags: Meds Medications Pain Management Source Type: blogs
“This Doesn’t Usually Hurt that Much”: Patients With Fibromyalgia Spectrum Disorder
By HANS DUVEFELT
Specialists in orthopedics and general surgery often want us, the primary care doctors, to manage postoperative pain. I don’t like that.
First, I don’t know as much as the surgeons about the typical, expected recovery from their procedures. My own appendectomy in Sweden in 1972 was an open one that I stayed in the hospital for several days for (and nobody mentioned that there were such things as pain medications). I’m sure a laparoscopic one leaves you in less pain, but I don’t personally know by how much.
Postoperative pain could be an indicator of complications. Why would a surgeon not w...
Source: The Health Care Blog - August 6, 2021 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Christina Liu Tags: Medical Practice Physicians Primary Care fibromyalgia spectrum disorder Hans Duvefelt Source Type: blogs
In Massachusetts, as Elsewhere, It ’s The Prohibition, Not The Prescriptions
Jeffrey A. SingerEarlier this month, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health releasedData Brief: Opioid ‐Related Overdose Deaths Among Massachusetts Residents. The report found that opioid ‐related overdose deaths remained essentially unchanged at roughly 2,000 per year since 2016. From 2001 thru 2010 the annual overdose rate was relatively stable and then began to accelerate in 2011. (Figure 1 and Figure 2 of the Data Brief).While the overdose rate was 1 percent less in 2019 than in 2016, and 1 percent greater in 2020 than in 2019, neither change was statistically significant.As with ot...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 16, 2021 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey A. Singer Source Type: blogs
Misguided Opioid Narrative Takes On More Water
Jeffrey A. SingerThe seemingly unsinkable prevailing narrative that the opioid overdose crisis was caused by health care practitioners ‘hooking” their pain patients on opioids just took on more water.Researchers in the surgery departments at Case Western Reserve University, University of Alabama at Birmingham, and American University of Antigua College of Medicine expected that opioids used to manage pain in trauma patients would lead to a higher rate of injury‐related deaths—including the subcategories of suicide, homicide, and “unintentional deaths” (a leading cause of which is drug overdoses). Using sta...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - April 6, 2021 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey A. Singer Source Type: blogs
Senators Portman, Whitehouse, and Klobuchar Think They Know Better Than The CDC About How To Treat Acute Pain
This study came one year after a largerstudy of more than 568,000 “opioid‐naïve” patients treated for acute postsurgical pain from 2008–2016 found a total “misuse” rate of 0.6 percent.The press report onCARA 2.0 issued by Senator Portman ’s office states the three‐day limit is recommended by the CDC in its 2016Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain (recommendation number 6). But these guidelines were aimed at treatingchronic pain, and were based on what the CDC stipulated was very limited evidence. The CDC also emphasized the guidelines were meant to be suggestive, not prescript...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - February 16, 2021 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey A. Singer Source Type: blogs
Opioid Policymakers Keep Tilting at Windmills, Striking Patients in the Process
Jeffrey A. SingerThe American Psychological Association Dictionary of Psychologydefines“denial” as “adefense mechanism in which unpleasant thoughts, feelings, wishes, or events are ignored or excluded from conscious awareness. It may take such forms as refusal to acknowledge the reality of a terminal illness, a financial problem, an addiction, or a partner ’s infidelity…”Many policymakers, including many in Congress, remain in a state of denial about the true cause of the overdose crisis:drug prohibition.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ’s October 4, 2020provisional report on...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - October 15, 2020 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey A. Singer Source Type: blogs
As the War on Drugs Relentlessly Grinds On, Overdose Deaths Relentlessly Mount
Jeffrey A. SingerWhen the Centers for Disease Control and Preventionannounced last January that drug overdoses in 2018 declined by 4.1 percent –from 70,237 in 2017 to 67,367 in 2018 –many in thepress took that as a sign of possible progress in America ’s longest war, the war on drugs. However, a deeper look at the data painted a very different picture.The CDC report stated:The age ‐adjusted rate of drug overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids other than methadone, which include drugs such as fentanyl, fentanyl analogs, and tramadol, increased from 0.3 per 100,000 standard popula...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - July 16, 2020 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey A. Singer Source Type: blogs
One-Stop Pain Control for Trimalleolar Fractures
The incidence of all ankle fractures is about 187 cases per 100,000 people each year. Trimalleolar fractures occur in seven to 11 percent of those cases. (Orthop J Sports Med. 2019;7[11 Suppl 6]; https://bit.ly/3eQ4lRl.) Trimalleolar fractures involve the lateral and medial malleolus and the distal posterior aspect of the tibia (sometimes called the posterior malleolus).These fractures are serious and often unstable. They typically but not always need urgent or even emergent surgery. Often, they are reduced with a closed reduction prior to surgery. We suggest using a hematoma block to assist with pain control during...
Source: The Procedural Pause - July 1, 2020 Category: Emergency Medicine Tags: Blog Posts Source Type: blogs
The opioid crisis is real. But so is pain.
“I’m not impressed with his pain.”“I only give Norco if I see a bone sticking out.”“She says her pain is a 10/10 but…” On any given shift in the emergency room, I hear some version of these said by residents or fellow attendings. And whenever I hear these phrases, I think to […]Find jobs at Careers by KevinMD.com. Search thousands of physician, PA, NP, and CRNA jobs now. Learn more. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - March 18, 2020 Category: General Medicine Authors: < span itemprop="author" > < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/jessica-badwards" rel="tag" > Jessica Badwards, MD < /a > < /span > Tags: Conditions Emergency Medicine Pain Management Source Type: blogs
Changes To EHR Presets Can Lower Number Of Opioid Pills Prescribed
Part of a growing body of evidence putting EHRs at the center of opioid use reduction efforts, a new study has concluded that small changes to EHR presets can lower the number of opioid pills physicians prescribe. This is particularly interesting when thinking back to the Practice Fusion opioid kickbacks we wrote about last week. […] (Source: EMR and HIPAA)
Source: EMR and HIPAA - February 4, 2020 Category: Information Technology Authors: Anne Zieger Tags: Analytics/Big Data C-Suite Leadership Clinical EMR-EHR Healthcare IT Hospital - Health System Chronic Opioid Therapy EHR Opioid Tracking EHR Presets Highland Hospital Norco Opioid Prescriptions Opioid Research Oxycodone Percoce Source Type: blogs
What is an Opioid?
Opioids are a class of drugs that include the illegal drug heroin, synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, and pain relievers available legally by prescription, such as oxycodone, hydrocodone, codeine, morphine, and many others. All individuals who take opioids run the risk of addiction. As such, when asking “what is an opioid?” it is important to know the different types, the signs of addiction, and the signs of an overdose.
Prescription Opioids
Opioids interact with the opioid receptors on nerve cells in the body and brain. This interaction interferes with communication between the body’s nerves and the brain. For ind...
Source: Cliffside Malibu - December 27, 2019 Category: Addiction Authors: Jaclyn Uloth Tags: Detox Resources for Alcohol and Drugs/Opiates Heroin Painkiller fentanyl opioid opioid crisis opioids prescription drug addiction Source Type: blogs
