When my phone rings, I don’t always know who is calling… sometimes it someone wanting to sell me an extended warranty on a car that I sold 2.5 yrs ago.. sometimes wants to lower the interest rate on my credit cards… which has no on going balances..
Other times it is from a chronic pain pt “in crisis” from being discharged/abandoned by their long time prescriber, this time it was her oncologist .
Today it was the latter… a senior female that suffers from a disease that causes nephropathy in her legs. She has been taking for years about 300mg MME/day and she was presented a prescription for a “10 days supply” and was told that the Hospital that employs this prescriber no longer wanted their employees to treat chronic pain and that they would give her a referral to a pain specialist.
Often pain specialists are 30-60-90 days out to get an appt and many will not give a new pt any opiates on the first visit.
This pt’s oncologist was just one of several in this “hospital owned cancer clinic” and an estimated 50-75 other pts from this practice were also going to get the same “kicked out the door treatment”.
Apparently this hospital had created a ACO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accountable_care_organization which basically meant that the hospital was the “insurer” and the provider of health care services for this mid-western city/county… and this poor woman’s health insurance was with the same hospital complex that was telling its employed prescribers to stop prescribing opiates for pain.
This pt already is dealing with HYPERTENSION.. one can just imagine when she goes into cold turkey withdrawal within the next two weeks.. what is going to happen to her BLOOD PRESSURE… since a hypertensive crisis is not untypical with a person being in cold turkey withdrawal and often what follows is a “brain bleed” – stroke and sometimes DEATH.
What is going to be the FINAL TALLY of all the pts of this hospital/insurance system that are going to be thrown into cold turkey withdrawal ? How many are going to suffer a stroke and no longer able to ambulate or even communicate… or worse yet DIE FROM THE STROKE… Or perhaps, those that can’t tolerate their increased pain and take the final action to eliminate their pain FOR GOOD.. and commit SUICIDE ?
Could whatever people within this hospital corporation that were behind this “medical decision” to force their employed prescribers to abruptly discontinue opiate prescribing… be guilty of assisting suicide, involuntary manslaughter, pt/senior abuse, civil rights violations of the Americans with Disability Act and Civil Rights Act.. for starters.
Filed under: General Problems
It’s time for someone start looking for all these patients and put together a class action lawsuit. Once these hospitals and insurance companies start getting hit with lawsuits and it becomes public this kind of abuse will stop. I’m in Texas and if that happen here in my city I would start researching, speaking to everyone coming out the door of these places and ask questions. Then I would contact an attorney who specializes in this type of class action lawsuit. Then I would advertise in news papers, local TV stations about ” Are You A Victim “. I would be aggressive if it was here in Texas….