Names of 90 suspected ‘doctor shoppers’ sent to state law enforcement agencies
http://www.wvgazette.com/article/20140907/GZ01/140909511/1419
From the article:
Two-thirds of the doctors who received the letters responded that they didn’t have direct access to the state’s controlled-substances database.
Doctors who write prescriptions for chronic pain — not related to a terminal disease or cancer — must check the database to ensure people aren’t visiting multiple physicians for painkillers, under state law.
West Virginia has a population of close to TWO MILLION… who believes that 90 people are causing the state to have the highest overdose death rate.. that is.. unless there are a large number of fake/stolen ID’s being used… that will never show up in the PMP database. Another example of the crooks being MUCH SMARTER than law enforcement or law enforcement “playing dumb” as a function of job security ?
Filed under: General Problems
Not sure were in this article it said that those 90 people are the cause of the overdose problem on WV. And those of you asking why docs aren’t checking the WVCDMS, here is what the article says,
“They should be looking at the monitoring program,” Goff said. “A lot of people probably wouldn’t be getting these extra prescriptions, if the prescribers looked. These folks are supposed to be registered and have access, but a bunch of them don’t appear to be.”
Goff said many doctors recently registered to use the prescription database after receiving warning letters.
“We said, ‘Here’s your patient. You wrote them a prescription, and so did 11 other people,’” Goff said. “We’re telling them they need to register, and there’s been a big influx of sign-ups after the letters went out. The letters have prompted a lot of them to comply.”
– See more at: http://www.wvgazette.com/article/20140907/GZ01/140909511/1419#sthash.IRFmpuqj.dpuf
Everyone is entitled to a opinion, but how about reading the article before you start complaining about how this isn’t the solution. We all have to start some where or nothing will be done at all.
Apparently you don’t understand the system.. all FIVE MILLION controlled substance prescriptions was reported as being filled by pharmacies in the state to the PMP database.. and only 90 people showed up as “shoppers”… that suggests that either their parameters to determine who a shopper is too high and/or pharmacists are accepting fake/forged ID’s.. meaning that those that have multiple ID’s are not going to show up in the database as shoppers. I better place to start is give healthcare professionals the ability to validate a driver’s license against the state’s on line database. If the driver’s license presented doesn’t match the on line database.. service is refused. If they are misrepresenting who they are.. what else are they misrepresenting ?
Regarding drivers licenses…when I used INSPECT…I never enter DL info..it asked me for name, address and DOB, at least last time I used it. I currently pick up controls for 3 family members since I run most of the errands in the household, I know most systems have one line for DL, and its mine thats on their file. So if they just used DL my name would pop up right? I didn’t always have the patient picking up or dropping off the.control so I on drop off I wrote the number on the script and on pick up I wrote the number on the digital pad. The ones I had suspicions on were the ones I could not question citizenship if you know what I mean….then we started seeing Mexican Consulate cards from Chicago we were told to accept as legal by the owner.
“Drug head”? Are you describing a patient who abuses drugs or someone suffering from addiction? Or an illegal drug dealer who has learned how to circumvent the system?
And “doctor shopping” can mean a lot of things, not all of them illegal. As a consumer of health care, am I not supposed to shop? Or is it only pain patients who are not allowed to shop for the best doctor?
Statistics are interesting. What’s new? Nothing. West Virginia has a drug problem. That’s old too.
That 90 might sound like a big number but it is only .0045% of the states population. This number is minisucle. There is a problem with news and the media. They create stories based on illogical assumptions. They see the number 90 and think it is an epidemic. But, as you can see it is less than 1/100% of the population. These government agencies use these numbers to justify their use of taxpayer money.
Why are physicians not required to access the states controlled substance database? If they did, then this would put and end to doctor shopping by the few people that do it. I once argued with a doc about a patient telling him that she was a drug head. He was so sure she was legitimate. I asked him if he would check the states database and he told me he did not have access to it. That is what the story here said too. So, the next question is why these docs don’t have access to the database and why they are not required to have access and to use it before prescribing pain meds to people they don’t know?