This week, the Senate passed a major bipartisan bill that addresses the opioid epidemic, one U.S. Senator Maria Catwell says will help in Washington state.
Just two years ago, 700 people in our state died of opioid overdoses, mostly in king, Snohomish and Pierce counties.
On Wednesday, sheriffs from each of those counties backed this new bill, saying the problem is so big, law enforcement can’t solve it alone.
“This notion that we are going to arrest out way out of this problem that a pair of handcuffs and a trip to jail that will somehow solve this epidemic is nonsense, “said Snohomish County Sheriff Ty Trenary.
Opioid bill takes aim at doctors as well as pharmaceutical companies
There are four parts of the bill: prevention, expanded treatment coverage, funding for drug courts and holding drug manufacturers accountable.
If drug manufacturers are held accountable, Senator Cantwell said doctors must be held accountable too.
On Monday, she talked about the problem of doctors over-prescribing opioids and used the example of an Everett doctor who wrote thousands of opioid prescriptions over nine years.
KOMO News learned he’s now retired, but he has a paper trail with the Washington Medical Association, whose Deputy Director said the doctor was sanctioned last year for not meeting the standard of care when prescribing opioids to some chronic pain patients.
“We gotta stop it, otherwise we are going to keep increasing the opportunity for more and more people,” Cantwell said in Seattle at a news conference with local law enforcement, including Attorney General Bob Ferguson.
Cantwell’s ‘more and more people’ refers to more opioids, more addictions and more deadly consequences.
The U.S. Senator not only points a finger at drug manufactures, but doctors too.
This is what she told lawmakers from the Senate Floor Monday, “In one example a physician from Washington wrote more than 10,000 prescriptions of opioids. This was 26 times higher than the average prescriber in Everett, Washington.”
We found that doctor, Dr. Donald Dillinger.
We wanted to ask him about those 10,000 opioid scripts, but no answer at his home. His Everett medical office closed and his voicemail said he retired.
The Attorney General’s office knows about him, too.
We discovered he’s was named in a lawsuit filed by the Washington Attorney General’s office in January for writing those 10,000 opioid prescriptions from 2007 to 2016.
Cantwell said spikes in drug distribution should be monitored and reported by drug manufacturers. She hopes proposed legislation that ups fines from $10,000 to $100,000 and in some cases up to a half a million dollars for violators will pass muster with other lawmakers.
“However, the drug manufacturer failed to report this suspicious activity,” said Cantwell.
Dr. Dillinger didn’t return our call, but we learned he was disciplined by the state in 2017 for ‘not meeting the standard of care for chronic pain patients’ said Micah Matthews, Deputy Director for the Washington Medical Association.
Public documents show the state restricted his license and put him on a compliance plan.
We learned today, the commission reopened its investigation after learning of the AG’s lawsuit.
“When the lawsuit was filed it became clear we didn’t have access to all the relevant records,” said Matthews.
The Commission is reviewing those additional records now.
“That’s disgusting to me honestly,” said Kelly an assistant occupational therapist, when she learned that Dr. Dillinger wrote thousands of prescriptions for opioids.
Kelly who is not connected to the case or the doctor said she encounters countless patients addicted and desperate for pain meds all the time.
“You see it all the time, they shop doctors and if they can’t get it from doctors they get it from the streets,” Kelly who didn’t want to reveal her last name.
Like the senator, she thinks the buck stops with manufactures and overprescribing doctors.
“They don’t need to prescribe so much meds because a patient will think they need to take all that,” said Kelly.
WMC’s Deputy Director said Dillinger disagreed with the charges and initial findings and took his case all the way to a formal hearing.
He said the commission determined the doctor violated the standard of care and assigned him two compliance officers.
It’s their job to make sure Practioners comply and are rehabilitated to good practice.
In October, Matthews said Dillinger informally surrendered his license to the WMC.
Matthews said since there was no mechanism in place to officially receive his medical license at the time, the state is currently negotiating the formal surrender of his license.
Matthews said reopening the investigation to look at records connected to the AG’s case may end up a moot point if they reach agreement on Dillinger’s license surrender.
The Commission recently adopted new comprehensive prescribing rules when it comes to opioids that would apply to acute, pre-operative and long term, but not chronic patients.
In those cases it limits the amount of opioids that can be dispensed at one time and requires monitoring and education requirements for providers.
Those new rules take effect in January of 2019.
Imagine this… the doctor wrote 10,000 prescriptions over 10 years.. that is NINETEEN Rx PER WEEK… or about FOUR RXS PER DAY… and the bureaucrats determined that he did not meet the standard of care for chronic pain patients
This TV station is really having to scrape the bottom of the barrel that the only quote that they could get from someone in health care that would tell them what they wanted to hear was:
“That’s disgusting to me honestly,” said Kelly an assistant occupational therapist, when she learned that Dr. Dillinger wrote thousands of prescriptions for opioids.
Kelly who is not connected to the case or the doctor said she encounters countless patients addicted and desperate for pain meds all the time.
“You see it all the time, they shop doctors and if they can’t get it from doctors they get it from the streets,” Kelly who didn’t want to reveal her last name.
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