U.S. House approves measure to prevent ‘doctor shopping’
Congress has approved of lifting a ban on giving medical patients a unique identifier as part of an effort to prevent the practice of doctor shopping for addictive painkillers and reduce medical mix-ups.
Congressman Bill Foster, a Democrat from Naperville, Illinois, introduced the amendment that was approved earlier this month as part of a $99.4 billion United States Department of Health and Human Services appropriations bill.
He said the measure would go a long way to fight the practice of doctor shopping for more prescription pain pills amid a deadly opioid crisis. Doctor shopping involves visiting multiple doctors to obtain multiple prescriptions for pills.
“This would not only guard against doctor shopping by those who are struggling with substance abuse disorder, but could also prevent those in recovery from accidentally being given prescription opioids after an injury, surgery, or childbirth, triggering a relapse,” Foster when he introduced the amendment.
Specifically, assigning a unique number to a patient would give doctors a way to immediately identify a patient’s medical history.
Pennsylvania Republican Mike Kelly said it would lower the cost of medical mix-ups due to misidentification.
“Lives have been lost and medical errors have needlessly occurred,” he said, sharing a story about his elderly father nearly being given the wrong medication during a hospital stay.
“These are situations that could have been entirely avoidable and patients would have been able to have been accurately identified and matched with their records,” Kelly said.
Opponents of an identifier have said it opens up health records to unwanted surveillance or privacy breaches, suggesting biometric identifiers would have the same benefit without assigning a number to people. Others have said it is the first step to nationalizing the private healthcare industry.
Each of us have a few unique identifiers… all digital FACIAL RECOGNITION, digital Finger Prints, digital optical scan… we don’t need any FRIGGIN UNIQUE NUMERIC IDENTIFIER… They need current digital technology… instead of playing a “number’s game”
Filed under: General Problems
In addition to being wrong on many levels, this will require system updates across every entity- insurers (and the countless software products that each insurer uses), Hospital and physician EMRs, PDMPs, proprietary PDMP software, pharmacies, PBMs, Medicare, Medicaid, Exchange/Marketplace Plans, etc. Also, will this number need to be issued to each individual patient on their insurance card? How do you assign to the uninsured? Nothing is as simple as they think it is!!!
All they’re doing is making it even easier for the government to go after doctors who prescribe. Wtf?! When the hell did all of this change, and will we, will incurable problems and conditions that can only be managed, when will we ever get our lives back?
I thought that is what Prescription monitoring program was suppose to do since they spent probably a total of a few billions for all the states to set that up. How many times do you think a doctor can go to another doctor for a acute problem or see several doctors getting opiate medication. Basically it rarely happens. The only thing this will do is end up limiting care as they limit the ability to change doctor if you do like yours or you get stuck with some jerk.. As far as the nurse giving this guy father the wrong medication nothing that what they want to do will stop a mistake of a nurse not doing a check of the patient arm ban and verify the medication with the patients name. That is as basic as a nurse can get and yet to many by pass it. Putting more numbers or requirements will not change a lazy nurse or doctor who make such preventable mistake. Instead excepting bad care and short cuts leading to medical mistakes that is prevented and corrected by proper follow-up education, good supervision and oversite of staff, disciplinary actions, more staff and finally listening to patients.
I’ll do that after I put a number on that morons arm. I had to stop watching the news because these incompetent dweebs.
Now I’m gonna have to stop following this absurd excuse called a crisis. I’m really starting to believe talk isnt going to stop them from what they are trying to do..It isn’t only with prescriptions,these nuts want total control over us
Yes, they DO want total control, and this WILL take away the rights of patients to proper care! It is outrageous and the democrats involved need to be primaried out. Please join us in 2020 March on Washington for disabled and pain patient rights and contact chronic pain advocacy groups like C-50 Chronic Pain Advocacy and many others. See my Facebook page. Our basic human rights are being taken away while everyone is focused on immigrants! I agree immigrants rights are important, but OUR rights are being deliberately ignored because there is something VERY BIG and VERY BAD going on here! I say this is Planned genocide and harm to disabled and chronically ill and pain patients seen as deadwood by greedy, selfish, fascist types, and that corporate democrats are doing this is chilling to the bone! We MUST organize and get money donated and set up for patient rights and God help us in the conservative Republican courts! This is bad, VERY bad! Vote in primaries, vote in general election. March, educate others, raise money for our cause. We need a radio station or TV station to put out the truth. We need some wealthy guy to care. I’m furious that that Need to Impeach guy wasted so much money on that campaign. He could have better used it to create a radio station or to buy up Clear Channel radio! Help Warren Buffet or someone! Call Paul Revere! The fascists are coming!
Thought we already had a unique number. It’s called a social security number
Scott,
That occurred to me as well. Seems there’s no system of any amount of (or lack of) effectiveness that some moron legislator won’t try to complicate, replicate, undermine, &/or replace with something that will hugely expand expenses & bureaucracy with little or no likelihood of improving what it’s replacing (or adding to).
I think Shakespeare was wrong…instead of all the lawyers, we oughta first go after the legislators.
There are still too many points to ‘score’ to be seen by others as slayers of ‘monsters under the bed’.