I got a call from a Pain practitioner at the Hospital where I had my surgery
When does does good pt care end and interfering with a pt’s care from another practitioner begin ? A SECOND OPINION that the pt never requested nor interested in … PROFESSIONAL MISCONDUCT ?
When I was in the hospital the OPIATE POLICE must have violated my HIPPA rights and told the Chronic Pain dept. that I was taking what they thought to be a HIGH DOSE. I got a call from them today inviting me to join their pain program at the Hospital. They even told me that they would supply my pain meds from the hospital pharmacy monthly if I where to move from my doctor of over 5 plus years to them. Their intent is to lower me or take me off all together. I thought I had to give permission for my records to be moved to some other un-involved dept?? I am so very tired of the PAIN POLICE. I have always taken my medication as directed or less than directed.
The climate is getting worse each and every day when it comes to pain management!
Filed under: General Problems
Steve..why does it tell me this is an insecure site when I post???
Please take your story to a malpractice lawyer to review for free. This is not right and needs to be made know! See what they advise at least, and if they aren’t wiling to address it…please take it to one of the ACTION based advocacy groups for those with pain. I’m interested in what your doctor thought of it, or if he is concerned about his practice!
This would frustrate me to no end. If you want to blow off steam, I’ve set up a chat channel for chronic pain. http://grommylommy.net/chronicpain.html put in whatever nickname you want, no password, and hit enter and chat away. Once a few people start showing up we can schedule a once a month or once a week meeting, and drop ins at any time.
Steve…you have a general idea of what I do for a living…from an FWA standpoint I agree with the first commenter that this certainly smacks of a Stark Violation. I wouldn’t be surprised if the person who’s driving this at the hospital failed to conduct anything resembling a due diligence review as to the legality of referring you and those like you into this “program” aka Federally Funded Cash Cow. Of course you’d want to consult with a qualified legal service provider before pursuing this, but I believe that it would be in the best interest of the chronic pain patients and your’s that are associated with this hospital. All it takes is one group like this getting the bejesus sued, fined or cited out of them for the rest of this collaborative apparatchik to take notice and rethink pursuing legitimate chronic pain patients in this manner. If you do nothing, you get nothing, right?
Let’s not forget, everyone is going to be after the monies set aside by Government to treat addiction….I think you will see many Courts, Prosecuting Attorneys, all changing their stance on rather prosecuting, making treatment the key! Everyone wants the dollars!
I WISH this was a HIPPAA violation but I think there is likely a case with Stark / Anti-kickback as the former privacy officer suggests. PO is right that growing the ranks of the addiction department is now financially incentivized. The fact that the hospital would pay for a patient’s medication (even if it’s in decreasing doses) demonstrates that they would almost certainly be making a sizable amount of cold hard cash on each enrollment.
Wow. All I can say is PLEASE SPEAK OUT LOUDLY!! Let the Chief Medical Officer of the hospital know that you were targeted and discriminated against, and you do not appreciate the interference with YOUR pain care! That is an absolute ethics violation as far as I’m concerned. No one talked to you about your pain and your needs, they went behind your back to discuss something that you did not do anything to incite. We have to make noise when these things happen. It’s a hassle, I know. But, if we don’t, no one is going to do it for us!
This is not a privacy breach. If it is part of a hospital safety protocol then it is covered under HIPAA as part of hospital operations. It also could be that the Hospitalist consulted with pain management during your stay. You agreed to this when you signed the consent to be admitted. Your Pain Management Physician may not be too happy that they are butting into your treatment without having the 5 year history on you that he has. So I would contact my physician and find out his thoughts. I think this could be more of a Stark or Anti-kickback violation rather than a HIPAA violation. http://oig.hhs.gov/compliance/provider-compliance-training/files/StarkandAKSChartHandout508.pdf Are they recruiting patients for their addiction treatment program or their pain management program? Seems like a fine line to me since technically you are not an addict/abuser. You are dependent. I am assuming that the physician who alerted the “Opiate Police” has a relationship with the hospital/pain management program that your regular pain management physician does not have???? There is a huge incentive for labeling dependent pain patients with opiate use disorders to collect those increased payments from the addiction program set up at the Federal level. Tell me this “opiate fear frenzy” is not profit motivated in the name of safety and I will call bullsh**!!!!! This will be a huge compliance issue for hospitals if the patients being subjected to it stand up and report it.