Letter-Writing Campaign Targets 'Doctor Shopping' for Pain Pills
Wednesday, April 6, 2016 | 0
The incidence of “doctor shopping” for prescription pain pills has decreased in West Virginia, a trend that may be partly attributable to an outreach campaign from the state pharmacy board to doctors and pharmacists.
West Virginia pharmacy board administrator Mike Goff began sending the letters in late 2014 after noticing a large number of patients had received narcotic prescriptions from 10 or more doctors over the past six months, the Charleston Gazette-Mail reported.
In his letter, Goff warned that the patients could be abusing the drugs themselves or illegally diverting the medication to others. The letter also reminds prescribers to check the state’s online prescription-drug monitoring database to see if a patient is receiving an excessive amount of opioid pain killers.
The letters are sent out after a pharmacy board review panel checks the database for people who are frequently seeking and filling prescriptions for narcotics. The review panel is now looking for those who have received prescriptions from eight or more doctors within six months, instead of 10 doctors.
The number of suspected doctor-shopping cases has declined steadily since 2014, and use of the prescription drug-monitoring database has been on the rise, the Gazette-Mail said.
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