http://www.toledoblade.com/Medical/2018/03/26/State-officials-announce-new-campaign-against-opioid-abuse.html

As the high rate of opioid abuse continues in northwest Ohio, state and federal officials unveiled proposals Monday

they hope stop addiction before it starts.

The day’s three events in Toledo included a visit by directors from the state departments of mental health and addiction services; department of health; medical board, and pharmacy board. They touted a new campaign to reduce prescription opioid abuse.

The “Take Charge Ohio” program educates on the dangers of unsafe use and suggests alternative treatments. A news conference took place at the Mental Health and Recovery Services Board of Lucas County.

This awareness effort is for doctors, patients, and the public to cut the risk of dependence while still managing pain, said Dr. Mark Hurst, medical director at the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services.

It is clear the opioid abuse problem did not occur overnight, but leaders are pushing back, Dr. Hurst said.

“With the support of Ohio’s physician and prescriber community, Ohio’s making promising progress in reducing the number of prescription opioids available for abuse,” Dr. Hurst said.

The www.takechargeohio.org website provides up-to-date information on disposing opioids and seeking help, said Dr. Clint Koenig, medical director of the Ohio Department of Health.

“For patients, Take Charge Ohio offers the opportunity to answer the question, ‘Is this medication right for me?’ and ‘What can I do to help best manage my pain?’ ” Dr. Koenig said.

More information can be found at the website. Funding for the program came as part of a $925,000 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention grant. It also covers media and opioid education prescribing.

Democratic candidate for governor Rich Cordray visited the city as well. Mr. Cordray stopped at the Lucas County Sheriff’s Office for a meeting with its Drug Abuse Response Team.

Opioid abuse is an enormous issue across the state, Mr. Cordray said. This team is a significant intervention they wish to further model, he said.

“It’s an ongoing crisis in the state of Ohio, and it’s impossible to get away from it, no matter where you go,” Mr. Cordray said.

In campaign materials, Mr. Cordray said Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine and Republicans in Columbus have been “asleep at the switch while the opioid epidemic has spread across Ohio.” Mr. Cordray proposes declaring a public health state of emergency, protecting Ohio’s Medicaid expansion, and growing funding for prevention and treatment.

In a statement, Mr. DeWine’s campaign for governor cited Sheriff John Tharp’s work, about $800,000 in grants from Mr. DeWine’s office, and support from the attorney general’s staff in assisting the Drug Abuse Response Team’s growth.

“The fact that Richard Cordray would criticize Mike DeWine at Lucas County Sheriff John Tharp’s office shows just how little Richard Cordray has been paying attention to Ohio and the opioid epidemic” spokesman Ryan Stubenrauch said.

A spokesman for the Dennis Kucinich for governor campaign said they are proposing affordable, accessible health care services, a sensible drug enforcement policy, and legalization of cannabis for pain management.

“‘Declaring a state of emergency’ is a dramatic-sounding but hollow attempt to compensate for the fact that he did nothing as attorney general and, until today, did nothing as a candidate to prove that he’s serious about this problem,” said spokesman Andy Juniewicz.

Also Monday, U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D., Toledo) at a news conference identified Ohio as a priority state for millions in new federal grant funding for the opioid crisis.

Miss Kaptur said she helped lead a provision in the recently signed Omnibus bill that gives Ohio priority access to state-level grants. It includes $950 million in new opioid response grants for states highly affected by the crisis, including Ohio. An additional $330 million will be available to law enforcement across the country.

Contact Ryan Dunn at: rdunn@theblade.com, 419-724-6095, or on Twitter @RDunnBlade.e

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Dr. Forest Tennant Retiring Due to DEA Scrutiny

www.painnewsnetwork.org/stories/2018/3/26/dr-forest-tennant-retiring-due-to-dea-scrutiny

Munzing was quoted in a DEA search warrant saying that “many patients are traveling long distances to see Dr. Tennant” and that it was unusual that so many were prescribed “extremely high numbers of pills/tablets.”

“I find to a high level of certainty that after review of the medical records… that Dr. Tennant failed to meet the requirements in prescribing these dangerous medications. These prescribing patterns are highly suspicious for medication abuse/and or diversion,” Munzing wrote.

Munzing has worked for several years as a consultant for the DEA and the Medical Board of California, creating a lucrative second career for himself.

dr. timothy munzing

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https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/politics/2018/03/26/youre-probably-overpaying-prescriptions-mississippi-making-easier-find-out/449323002/

If you have a copay, chances are you’ve overpaid for a prescription at some point.

That’s because an insurance copay can be more expensive than the cash price of the drug — more expensive than if you’d had no insurance and paid out of pocket.

And because of “gag clauses” in contracts between pharmacies and the insurance claims payers, you’d never know this. Until now.

In a bill Gov. Phil Bryant signed in March, which will take effect in July, insurers can no longer prevent pharmacists from telling patients whether their copay is higher than the cash cost of their medication.

A couple of weeks ago, Valerie McClellan went to the Kroger pharmacy in Madison to pick up a prescription for an allergy medication. She learned the copay was going to cost her $50. 

“I must have gone ‘whoa,'” McClellan said, because the pharmacist did something unusual: he told McClellan how she could get the medication for just $10 by using a coupon online. 

“At the time, I remember thinking, ‘Wow, I’ve never had a pharmacist tell me where I can go to save some money,'” she said.

Related: Coordinating prescription refills in Mississippi is about to get easier

Insurance copays don’t take into account the actual price of the medication, so a beneficiary will pay the same amount — whether $5, $25 or $50 — even if the drug is less expensive.

“The consumers, they think that they have insurance, therefore the insurance company or the pharmacy benefit manager is helping lower their drug costs,” said Robert Dozier, executive director of the Mississippi Independent Pharmacies Association. “And in some cases, it’s not.”

In a study released in March, customers paid copays that effectively overcharged them for medications nearly one-fourth of the time.

The analysis, conducted by University of Southern California Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics, included 1.6 million people who paid for 9.5 million prescriptions.

The study’s authors are calling it the “Copay Clawback Phenomenon” because the overpayments — the difference between the copay and the cash price of the prescription — go to the pharmacy benefit manager, the middlemen that pay drug claims for insurance companies. These include Express Scripts, CVS Caremark and OptumRx.

And until a few weeks ago, many pharmacists in Mississippi couldn’t tell the patient what was going on.

Pharmacy benefit managers in the state were able to include “gag clauses” as part of their contract, so pharmacists couldn’t notify a patient if the cost of their prescription was cheaper than their copay, even if they asked.

With a bill this legislative session, Mississippi joined 14 states that have enacted laws prohibiting these gag orders.

“It gives us an extra tool to help people without the fear of retribution,” said Jackson’s Beemon Drugs owner Lester Hailey. “We’re proud of the state for passing this and giving us the freedom to save some money for the consumers. I think it’s a great step.”

Express Scripts and CVS Caremark both told Clarion Ledger they do not endorse the use of gag orders. 

OptumRx and CVS Health have both faced lawsuits alleging they use the clawbacks. OptumRx told NBC it supports charging the lowest amount to customers while CVS has outright denied the allegation.

Several other insurers face lawsuits regarding the alleged scheme.

On March 8, Gov. Phil Bryant signed the Prescription Drugs Consumer Affordable Alternative Payment Options Act, sponsored by House Public Health and Human Services Chairman Sam Mims, R-McComb, and others, encouraging pharmacies to communicate with customers about cheaper payment options.

“I feel awesome that that’s changed now, that you can have that conversation with your pharmacist, and they can assist you,” McClellan said.

Hydrocodone, an opioid, is the most prescribed medication in Mississippi. In the Schaeffer Center study, patients were overcharged for the pill more than one-third of the time. For folks whose copays were higher than the cost of hydrocodone, the average upcharge totaled $6.94.

For other drugs, the average overpayment was much higher —  $14.56 for the cholesterol medication Crestor, $17.55 for fluticasone propionate nasal spray and almost $20 for bronchitis medication Ventolin.

For four drugs — zolpidem tartrates like Ambien, cholesterol medication simvastatin, calcium blocker amlodipine besylate and prednisone steroid — patients were overcharged more than half of the time.

Around the time McClellan bought the allergy medication, she said she also paid out of pocket, instead of a copay, for her husband’s heart medication, saving her roughly $30.

Add it up, McClellan said, and that’s a monthly water bill. Or a tank full of gas. 

Had the pharmacist not told her about other payment options, McClellan said she wouldn’t have known to ask.

“We just accept that insurance is this, my copay is this, and that’s it,” she said. “We’ve been taught we don’t have any power over what doctors charge, what medications cost. We just pay it.”

That may be starting to change. In an often difficult-to-navigate health care system, Mississippians can save money by asking their pharmacist if their copay is higher than the out-of-pocket cost of their prescription. 

This article is about prescription prices and the graphic that they use at the top of the article  HYDROCODONE… and if you do a word search in the 800+ word article you will find the word HYDROCODONE – TWICE IN THE ENTIRE ARTICLE !!!  – in the same sentence.

It would appear that some/many in the media will pull in a opiate – somehow – into just about any article that deals with just about anything that has to do with prescriptions.

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https://www.painnewsnetwork.org/stories/2018/3/26/doctor-shopping-has-always-been-rare

The importance of doctor shopping over the last decade was not because of frequency — it has more to do with quantity. Research shows that the 0.7% of people who doctor-shopped were buying about 2 percent of the prescriptions for opioid medications, constituting about 4% of the amount dispensed.

Moreover, these doctor-shoppers tended to be young, to pay in cash, and to see five or six prescribers in a short period of time, so they are easily identifiable and can be thwarted with prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMP’s).

Roger Chriss lives with Ehlers Danlos syndrome and is a proud member of the Ehlers-Danlos Society. Roger is a technical consultant in Washington state, where he specializes in mathematics and research.

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View at Medium.com

www.medium.com/@thomasklinemd_65234/when-does-pain-treatment-become-protected-palliative-care-treatment-339d29024b57

A Medical Office Approach — Clinical and Reimbursement Guidelines

Thomas F. Kline, M.D.,Ph.D. and Carolyn D. Concia, Palliative Care N.P.

The purpose of this paper is to encourage primary care providers to offer palliative care in their practices for patients suffering from intractable pain — of any origin. Palliative care’s evolution, CDC exemptions and reimbursement will be explained. Finally, guidance on how physicians and practitioners can easily start offering palliative care without restrictions on pain medication dosage. You can read more on this post about alleviating pain.

“If we know that pain and suffering can be alleviated, and we do nothing about it, then we ourselves become the tormentors.” — Primo Levi

Palliative care allows more comprehensive and humane treatment as it is exempted from opioid dosage restrictions set by CDC and many states over the past two years. Primary care doctors and practitioners can avoid restrictions if their patients qualify for palliative care. (1)

Pain care becomes palliative care when three criteria are met:

● The underlying disease has no cure

● There is a likelihood the disease will shorten lifespan

● Symptomatic treatment has a high probability of improving the quality of life

EVOLUTION/DEFINITIONS OF PALLIATIVE CARE: WHAT IT IS AND WHAT IT IS NOT

Palliative care is not new. “Palliative care” was created by Balfour Mount, a Canadian-trained physician serving as visiting professor at the first hospice, St. Christopher’s Hospice in London. In 1973, he established a palliative care program at Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, the first palliative care program to be integrated in an academic teaching hospital [2]. Palliative care has evolved in scope since that time. (Table 1)

Year

Source and Definition

1990 World Health Organization (WHO): “…The active total care of patients whose disease is not responsive to curative treatment.”

1993 The Oxford Textbook of Palliative Medicine: “The study and management of patients with active, progressive, far-advanced disease for whom the focus of care is the quality of life.”

2007 WHO (revision): “An approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problem associated with life-threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial, and spiritual.” (4)

2013 National Consensus Project: “Palliative care means patient and family-centered care that optimizes quality of life by anticipating, preventing, and treating suffering. Palliative care throughout the continuum of illness involves addressing physical, intellectual, emotional, social, and spiritual needs and to facilitate patient autonomy, access to information, and choice.”

EVOLVING DEFINITION OF PALLIATIVE CARE — Table 1 (above)

“The goal of palliative care is to prevent and relieve suffering and to support the best possible quality of life for patients and their families, regardless of the stage of the disease or the need for other therapies”

– the Oxford Book of Palliative Medicine (3).

DOSAGE RESTRICTIONS WAIVED BY CDC AND MOST STATES

Palliative care exemption for CDC restrictions regarding the prescribing of opioid pain medicine gives providers the freedom to do what is proper to manage pain. Directly from the CDC “Guideline” page one, line one: “This guideline provides recommendations for primary care clinicians who are prescribing opioids for chronic pain outside of active cancer treatment, palliative care, and end-of-life care.” (1)

Most states provide palliative care exemptions as well. Palliative care is for all prognosis levels, diagnoses and ages groups. The only qualifications are unavailability of a cure and persistent symptoms. It can be CHF with shortness of breath, COPD with intractable coughing, or a person with lupus, arachnoiditis, or advanced arthritis where cure is impossible and treatment focuses on symptoms of pain interfering with the enjoyment of life. It is no different than certifying one of your patients’ needs cardiac care, or comprehensive diabetic care.

Palliative care determinations can be made by licensed providers only. By the same token, people without licenses cannot try to ignore or delete Palliative Care Status (PCS) once in place. Once the PCS is determined, tCDC and state restrictions for opioid prescribing are bypassed.

This allows physicians and practitioners to prescribe what they want, as medically necessary and humane to relieve suffering without interference. Placing any restrictions on palliative care would be tantamount to ignoring CDC and state guideline exemptions and imposing unwarranted restrictions on providers engaged in palliative medical care.

Although the DEA is concerned about “too much” prescribing of pain medicine, the Palliative Care Status, and the DEA definition of prescribing for a “legitimate medical purpose” should help decrease concerns of high and prolonged doses, still legal for any FDA approved opiate, and proper under PCS exemptions.

Practitioners using traditional titration methods to MME levels of 500 or more for many PCS patients are needed to relieve intractable pain still legal for all FDA approved opiates, and of course for exempted PCS patients.

FDA does warn to “heed warnings to watch for addiction and excessive sedation” both of which are rare in proper hands of licensed physicians. As of this writing there is no evidence of addiction occurring after patients are stable on their opiate treatment. Overdoses in non-addicted medical patients are rare as well, at the level of serious side effects of many medications.

Palliative care is not a prescribed program like hospice and does not require the patient to be near end of life, nor to sign up and loose other benefits as occurs in Medicare programs. Palliative Care Status is commonly misunderstood as being available to only those who are at end of life, which is incorrect.

BILLING AND REIMBURSEMENT

Palliative care visits can occur in any setting — hospital, home, or office, not billed as “palliative care” but as standard offices focusing on symptom management, not the disease. Palliative care like any other type of care is billed fee for service using symptom codes instead of or in addiction to disease codes. Symptom codes are fully reimbursed just like disease codes. For example, G89.29 is the ICD-10 code for chronic pain and is fully reimbursable by itself. Painful disease management under a palliative care plan is complex, may involve other team members and is very time consuming. To reimburse for the extra time spent, CMS had provided three mechanisms.

Billing by time: If more than 50% of the visit is concerned with “counseling and/or coordination of care”, time itself controls the visit parameters, obviating cumbersome the AMA “2 of 3” CPT guideline rules for standard office billing codes. It allows the primary care professional the extra time needed when with complex palliative care patients without worry as to how many body parts are examined. The time spent must be in the presence of the patient, family member, for “counseling and coordination of care” For example, a level 5 established patient is set at 40 minutes. If 25 minutes is spent with coordination of care, by calling the pharmacist during the visit, and coordinating care with the patient, time will then override the clinical coding rules. (5)

If you are supervising a palliative care certified person at home under Medicare home health services, you can bill separately for non-face to face time through the Home Care Plan Oversight code series G0180 (which pays about $100). This cognitive time will cover phone calls to pharmacists, home health nurses, colleagues, reviewing labs/x-rays/consults, etc. and is important reimbursement for complex Home Health Agency homebound palliative care patients.

If your patient is not covered by home health, the same type of non-face to face time can be billed using the newer Chronic Care Management (CCM) code series 99490. These charges begin with 15 minutes paying about $50 and are unlimited for further documented time spent with, for example pharmacies, prior authorizations, phone calls from member of the palliative care teams, etc. Some of the glitches have been worked out this last year. Substantial recoupment of time with complex palliative care disease can be billed. Details are at: CMS FAQs for CCM (6)

Patients with dementia and cognitive impairments frequently exhibit maladaptive behaviors when pain is overlooked. Some physicians have the patients undergo brief trials of low dose pain medication to empirically diagnosis the pain as cause of changes in behavior. If pain is diagnosed and there’s no cure for the underlying cause, billing would be the same fee for service palliative care as other patients. The patient would be eligible for the new code G0505, a $200 cognitive assessment. Older palliative care patients with or without dementia would be free of imposed restrictions on their pain care and need not be forced off as is occurring in many states such as Washington State, and others.

Exemption is Exemption.

If a pain patient is suicidal, proper pain treatment will usually treat the problem and becomes a suicide prevention tool. If additional psychological counseling for the suicidal ideations, or other problems is needed, this can be added to the office visit using the 90837 series codes.

Commercial Insurances generally follow the Medicare standard. The Palliative Care Plan needs to be developed and documented like any other care plan. It can be supplemented with other services, or not, at the discretion of the licensed professional certifying the patient. Other services requiring Chronic Care Management (CCM) time can include therapists, nurses, home care agencies, and even palliative radiation for painful tumors (not allowable under hospice rules).

It is these complex palliative care pain and other symptomatic patients, young or old, that CMS is finally providing reimbursements for non-face to face or “cognitive” work time for all the primary care practitioners willing to accept and treat complex and challenging patients and be paid for it.

WHAT CAN I DO TO START HELPING MY PATIENTS?

1. Offering office palliative care is the first and most important step in returning care to first line practitioners and returning compassionate medical care to the office.

2. Provide a “Palliative Care Certificate” which can be generated by the licensed practitioner including a certifying statement the patient has the triad for palliative care: no cure, condition existing more than 6 months, and the need of symptom treatment. (Please see attachment for an example certificate).

3. Add the words, “palliative care” to your prescriptions so the pharmacist understands the patient’s severity and chronicity of the illness and has Palliative Care Status. Provide the patient and pharmacist with a copy of the certificate.

4. Encourage your patients to be part of the solution. Get them involved in their own care in fact- finding, keeping a diary, setting goals, and communicating routinely. They can help with documenting the time spent on the phone with you, etc. These Discussions are billable under time coding and CCM. Tell the patient what is going on, they love to help.

5. Learn coding for improved reimbursements for non-face to face time needed for complex, time consuming patients. Many patients are looking for competent, caring practitioners willing to handle the challenge complex illnesses after being cast aside in the last 18 months as “too troublesome” or “too DEA risky”.

The Palliative care certification allows freedom for primary care practitioners to treat with full doses of pain medications, bringing back old-fashioned compassion to our first job — relieving pain. At the same time being properly reimbursed for extra time to do our job as real doctors and practitioners unfettered by those without licenses trying to control the practice of medicine.

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http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/chronic-pain-patients-to-rally-in-dallas-for-access-to-opioids-10511190

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Editorial: Shortage of legal opioids needs to be addressed

http://buffalonews.com/2018/03/25/editorial-comfort-the-afflicted/

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www.aapsonline.org/opioid-overdose-crisis-is-from-illicit-fentanyl/

The U.S. is said to be suffering from a crisis in deaths from opioid overdoses, prompting legislative and other efforts to clamp down on physician prescribing of these drugs. However, this effort is likely misdirected, and targeting legal prescriptions is thus unlikely to reduce overdose deaths, according to a careful review of official government data by John D. Lilly, M.B.A., D.O., in the spring issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons.  Full Article: http://www.jpands.org/vol23no1/lilly.pdf

Until 2013, deaths attributed to synthetic opioids were fairly stable, but a sharp upward trend began then, with an increase of 635% from 2014 to 2016.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) uses the International Classification of Diseases, 10^th revision (ICD-10), to identify causes of death, but NIDA’s overlapping categories can be confusing. Using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Wonder data base, Dr. Lilly sorts out the deaths associated with illicit fentanyl. The main sources of illicit fentanyl are Mexico and China. It is often mixed with heroin.

Notably, the spike in deaths has occurred while opioid prescribing is being heavily discouraged and placed under increasingly severe constraints. Dr. Lilly concludes that these policies are apparently driving opioid misusers from legally prescribed drugs to illicit drugs, which are far deadlier because of high potency and unreliable dosing.

The Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons is published by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), a national organization representing physicians in all specialties since 1943.

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New Florida opioids law puts limit on prescriptions

https://www.ems1.com/legislation-funding/articles/378188048-New-Florida-opioids-law-puts-limit-on-prescriptions/

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Gov. Rick Scott signed legislation into law Monday that puts a limit on opioid prescriptions and provides $65 million to fight the epidemic statewide. He signed the bill at the “ground zero” of the opioid crisis — Manatee County.

The new law, HB 21, puts a three-day limit on most prescriptions for acute pain and toughens the drug control monitoring program. The bill also provides for additional treatment opportunities, recovery support services, outreach programs and resources to help law enforcement and first responders to stay safe.

“The bill will help limit the chance of drug addiction,” Scott said. “The most important thing we can do is stop the addiction in the beginning.”

The new law adds more than $53.6 million in funding, which with additional money promised in the budget, totals about $65 million dedicated to fighting the opioid epidemic.

Manatee Sheriff Rick Wells said even more money is needed.

“We need more and more funding to be distributed to the treatment side and deal with mental illness,” Wells said after Scott signed the bill during a ceremony at a sheriff’s office station in Bradenton. “On the law enforcement side, we are going to do what we do, but it’s just not going to be enough. We just try to eliminate the source, but we have to help those who are struggling and those that are addicted.”

The new legislation was signed before a gathering of local law enforcement, including Wells, Bradenton Police Chief Melanie Bevan, Palmetto Police Chief Scott Tyler, Holmes Beach Police Chief William Tokajer and Sarasota Sheriff Thomas Knight. Also present was the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Jim Boyd, R-Bradenton.

PDF (1).pdf by Ed Praetorian on Scribd

 

“There’s not a person in this room who doesn’t have a family member or a friend of the family that hasn’t been affected by this epidemic,” Boyd said. “This is another step to curbing this epidemic.”

Since the indictment of at least 34 drug dealers on federal charges during Operation Hot Batch, announced in December, suspected fatal and non-fatal overdoses have been on the decline in Manatee County.

The Manatee County Sheriff’s Office has investigated 47 suspected overdoses in the first two months of 2018, compared to 172 suspected overdoses in the first two months of last year. There have been six suspected fatal overdoses during the first two months of 2018, compared to 21 during the same period.

Wells said by charging those drug dealers in federal court, law enforcement could charge dealers adequately for them to receive a just sentence, since a new state law had not yet taken effect.

HB 477, which went into effect Oct. 1, now enables drug dealers selling fentanyl or synthetic forms of the lethal drug to be charged with murder and trafficking, or face minimum mandatory prison sentences and fines.

“They were killing people down here, and they didn’t care about it,” Wells said.

Scott took time Monday to recognize law enforcement officers “who are at the front-line of this epidemic,” and specifically Manatee sheriff’s office Lt. Brady McCabe. Last year, McCabe was responding to a suspected overdose, and as he responded the woman stopped breathing. McCabe gave the woman a dose of naloxone that revived her shortly after paramedics arrived.

“I want to thank all the law officers that on top of keeping us safe from horrible things that are happening out there, they are also dealing with the drug addiction out there,” Scott said.

Getting prescribed opioids

The new law, which will take effect July 1, will limit prescriptions for acute pain and hold those prescribing opioids more accountable.

Anyone who is prescribed a schedule II opioid, which includes Vicodin, Dilaudid, Demerol, OxyContin and fentanyl, for acute pain will only be prescribed a three-day supply, once the new law takes effect. If the prescriber feels more than a three-day supply is medically necessary, a seven-day supply can be prescribed. The prescription will need to say “acute pain exception” and the patient’s record will need to include documentation of the acute condition and a lack of alternative treatment that justifies the seven-day supply.

“Is that an inconvenience? Yes,” Florida House Speaker Richard Corcoran said after Scott signed the new law. “Is it an inconvenience that’s worth saving 50,000 lives nationwide? Absolutely.”

The new law will also require those healthcare providers prescribing or dispensing controlled substances to first check a patient’s history in the Florida Prescription Drug Monitoring Program. Penalties are also increased for those who provide drugs that are medically unnecessary under the new law.

“We knew that opioids were being prescribed in a reckless manner,” Wells said.

About 80 to 85 percent of those dealing with heroin or fentanyl addiction began with a legal prescription for a minor medical procedure, the sheriff said. To truly attack the epidemic, that needs to monitored and controlled. And those already addicted need long-term treatment so they don’t revert to pills.

“Funding needs to be available for long-term treatment,” Wells said. “Just a 12-step program is not going to work when you are dealing with an opioid addiction. It’s just too strong. We have to make sure we are able to fund treatment and mental illness providers properly.”

Ultimately, Wells said the most important thing will be for treatment centers to get the funding they need, and he is counting on the governor and lawmakers to deliver the money promised.

“They need more beds. We need more of them. Right now, we are having to send people to Sarasota, to Tampa … as far as Miami and Colorado,” Wells said.

Funding breakdown

Here’s how the funding included in the new law is broken down:

• More than $27 million in federal funding from the Opioid State Targeted Response Grant appropriated to the Florida Department of Children and Families. This grant was the second year of money promised under the 21st Century Cures Act through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services grant program.
• More than $14.6 million yearly for enhancements to the substance abuse system of care given to the Florida Department of Children and Families for community-based services, including additional residential treatment beds, outpatient treatment and case management, emergency room treatment and follow-up, peer recovery support services and targeted outreach for pregnant women with substance abuse disorders.
• $5 million yearly to the Florida Department of Health to provide naloxone for first responders.
• $6 million yearly to the Office of State Court Administrator for medication-assisted treatment for opioid addiction.
• More than $990,000 to enhance the Florida Prescription Drug Monitoring System. The system will receive $873,000 a year in subsequent years.

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https://cvs-caremark.pissedconsumer.com/useless-pharmacist-too-afraid-of-what-201803251218883.html

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