![]()
Police get tips on prescription drug abuse
Apparently in INDIANA … the state could care less about HIPAA since they give law enforcement Carte blanche assess to the state’s PMP (INSPECT). Some states make law enforcement to get a subpoena to get access to the state’s PMP database. But then Indiana has for several years in a row the highest number of pharmacy robberies, one of the states with the highest number of meth lab busts and then there was the HIV +, HEP B&C epidemic in small Scott county (25,000 pop) – 180+ pts.
The reporter on this article… seems to have trouble with math… the number of prescriptions in Porter County averaged 67 doses/Rx…but apparently when the number of Rxs filled state wide the average increased to a EVEN 100 doses per Rx… UNLIKELY accurate … I guess that the BIGGER you make the number.. the more important/troublesome it sounds ?
That 10,000 prescriptions as a “trigger” for a prescriber seems a bit strange… presuming that a chronic pain pt got the recommended long acting and short acting opiate… resulting in a single chronic pain pt getting 24 Rxs/yr. Meaning that a prescriber would have around 300 chronic pain pts and writing Rxs for 14 pts per day. Since most stable chronic pain pts would not require a monthly office visit… Generating Rxs for that many pts would not take up much of the prescriber’s time.
Just more “cookie cutter” medicine ? Indiana seems to keep trying… but.. can’t seem to get out of their own way 🙁
Mike Teeling came to a program on prescription drug monitoring to learn more and register himself and his department for the program.
Registering for INSPECT, the Indiana Board of Pharmacy Prescription Monitoring System, allows law enforcement and doctors to check for people who may be abusing prescription drugs, as well as giving the state the resources to keep an eye on doctors who may be making too many prescriptions. The database tracks prescriptions.
“Oftentimes we’ll run across people who have obvious prescription drugs we can identify and they don’t have a prescription vial or a prescription with them,” said Teeling, a detective with the Ogden Dunes Police Department. “It could be very beneficial to rule someone in or rule someone out as far as breaking the law.”
About a dozen officers from various police departments attended the training Thursday, held at the Porter County Sheriff’s Department and put on by the county’s Drunk Driving Task Force.
Through Aug. 1, pharmacists in Porter County filled 294,109 prescriptions for narcotics, which totaled 19.7 million individual doses.
“That’s more than 19 million pills on the streets,” said Ashley Crawford, a state inspector and compliance officer with the Indiana Public Licensing Agency, adding the top five prescription drugs across the state are Vicodin; Oxycontin; Xanax; Tramadol; and Adderall.
Across Indiana, pharmacists filled 4.5 million prescriptions for opioids alone last year, equivalent to 455 million doses of the drug.
“The numbers are staggering,” she said.
She talked about prescriptions for drug combinations that set off red flags, such as an “Rx Speedball,” which is an opiate and an amphetamine such as Adderall, and said “doctor shopping,” which is going from doctor to doctor seeking prescriptions, is not illegal, but lying to a doctor to get drugs or using forgery to get them are illegal.
Other red flags are paying for prescriptions with cash or a combination of Medicaid and cash, since some of the prescriptions can run upwards of $600, and doctors who write too many prescriptions.
“Our threshold is, if you’re writing up more than 10,000 (prescriptions), it’s a red flag for us,” Crawford said.
Crawford said 51 percent of the state’s licensed pharmacists participate in the database, as do 47 percent of the state’s healthcare practitioners. It’s not mandatory for doctors and other medical professionals to register, but the licensing agency is trying to change that “because that’s where the problem starts.”
Law enforcement officers who register to use the database can access it 24 hours a day, seven days a week, she said, adding police also have the ability to request an inspection on a doctor.
Her agency also has the ability to check if something seems out of whack.
“We ask pharmacists, ‘Who are your problem doctors? Who are your problem patients?'” she said, adding that information can be referred to the Drug Enforcement Agency for an investigation.
Filed under: General Problems
I really love how Ms. Crawford says “That is more than 19 million doses on the street. ” Like chronic pain patients are immediately turning around and selling them to a dealer. She just showed HUGE bias. Also that 10,000 scripts is kind of low for a lot of pain management offices. at 30 patients a day, 5 days a week ( multiple PAs) 52 weeks a year you get 15,600 scripts. Then we have the issue of police fishing for suspects. You can’t tell me that the cops are not going to be generating long lists of who takes what in their area. Plus who knows who else has access to those lists once they become so called police property. Can they be accessed via a FOIA request to the department ? Will they be shared with wives, girlfriends, boyfriends and husbands ? So much temptation in the hands of the police who may use them for who knows what purpose !
Great points you have made, Anne Fuqua! When tunnel vision has everyone looking at prescription issues from an abuse angle, there’s no allowance made for an actual medical indication for certain combinations. HIPAA rights have just gone right out the window here in Hoosierland! It’s not applicable to you if you require the “wrong” prescriptions. Again, pain patients’ rights are not respected.
But if u call in to PD to report possible suspicion illegal drug active, they will say there us nothing they can do unless u actually saw the rrugs. So illegal drug dealers have more privacy rights than Patients? Just another example of the government taking the easy way out to give the public the illusion that they r actually taking proactive measures to fight drug problems.
Codeine is an opioid. It’s the only cough medication proven more effective than plain water. (Dextromethorphan, the Stimulant sold in over-the-counter cough remedies, was shown less effective than water.)
Now that Hillary Clinton has walking pneumonia and a bad cough, I wonder if she still thinks the medicine that’s relieving her cough and allowing her to sleep, should be prohibited to the great masses of the people and only made available to elitists like herself.
Drugs are a means of self-defense against a disease.
Inventing a reckless way to misuse drugs, that puts others in danger (eg., driving while drunk), must be prosecuted as reckless endangerment of others. The person who uses drugs irresponsibly, like the person who shoots a gun irresponsibly, can be prosecuted for endangering others, even when no one is actually wounded. Law enforcement needs to prioritize criminal acts that harm or threaten people. Merely using drugs to treat disease, is not criminal.
Ms. Crawford is looking at this problem from a law enforcement perspective, NOT a medical perspective. It states that she is a compliance officer so I’m doubting she has the medical background to understand why stimulants can be useful with opioids (or any other issue discussed). Our own government, the military actually, recognized during WWII that stimulants were useful for augmenting the analgesic effect of opioids to preserve the limited morphine supply in war time. For patients with continuing drowsiness, who have been assessed for underlying problems like sleep apnea, they can be essential to helping maintain alerntness without sacrificing pain relief. In an era where MME has become a matter of obsession, stimulants can be helpful in maximizing pain relief without escalating the dose (many patients can actually decrease their dose after starting a stimulant). Stigmatizing stimulant co-prescription harms patients by eliminating an effective manner of providing pain relief (or countering persistent drowsiness) and minimzing the need for dose escalation.
Ok all, Porter County is on the edge of 2 high percentage work related injury industries, steel mills and the agriculture/ farming industry. If they really want to lower numbers of prescription opiates in this county they need to focus on work place safty. I grew up 40 miles from Portage Indiana just across the Michigan state line. My reason for opiod use has to do with my work related injuries and everyone is know from this area who take opiates do so because of work related injuries. So if they want to exaggerate any numbers, work place injuries should be the one that they do.