Pain Clinic Abuse

People in Florida are experiencing a rapid increase in opioid use. Thousands of families will and have been affected by the epidemic including children. Opioids are prescribed medications that is used in treating pain. If not taken properly, opioids can lead to an addiction that will forever change your life. The main prescribers of opioids are medical professionals, who choose to run ‘pill mills’. While running these ‘pill mills’, professionals are getting rich and ruining the lives of many.

Considerable cautions have been obtained throughout the United States to decrease the misuse of prescription opioids and helps to minimize opioid overdoses and related complications. Even though the pain medications have a significant part in the treatment of acute and chronic pain situations, it sometimes happen that the high dose prescription or the prescribed medications, without having enough monitoring, can create bad outcomes. It is always a dilemma for the providers to find who is really in need of pain medications and to identify those who are questionably misusing opioids.

Through my observations of the Narcotics Anonymous meeting I believe that my analysis could be beneficial to the realm of medicine. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2014) released a study that displayed, “health care providers wrote 259 million prescriptions for painkillers in 2012, enough for every American adult to have a bottle of pills.” Considering the mass amount of prescriptions being written nationwide, it is not surprising that one of the members in the NA meeting I attended was able to easily obtain painkillers from her doctor. The specific interaction I encountered during the Narcotics Anonymous meeting where the woman described that her addiction was being supported by the constant prescriptions written by her doctor

Statistically, Arkansas has been ranked first in non-medical use of prescription pain relievers. Daily, 2,500 children (ages 12-17) experiment with prescription pain medications, and Arkansas averages a death per day from prescription drug abuse. These statistics are embarrassing to our state and need to be trimmed down to help protect our youth. In an effort to help curtail this problem, the Arkansas Prescription Monitoring Program (PMP) was implemented in 2013 by the Arkansas Department of Health pursuant to the enactment of An Act to Establish a Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (Act 304) by the Arkansas State Legislature. The program is currently funded through federal grants. The initial goals of the PMP are:

Doctors and clinical prescribers have discovered their role in curtailing the increased opioid prescriptions in America. It is without a doubt that they play a role in facilitating the opioid misuse endemic in the past by being enablers of the situations. When patients ask for pain medications, they do not take time to analyze the pain complaints or suggest alternative medications other than opioids. Even in instances when one doctor declines to offer a patient an opioid prescription for their pain needs, the patient is likely to find another who will give the prescription. However, there has been wide recognition of the opioid misuse endemic such that clinical prescribers are practicing more vigilant prescribing and are advocating opioid-free

In the United States, there has been upward swing of opioid abuse over the past decade. Overdose deaths involving opioids – both prescription pain relievers and heroin – almost quadrupled between 1999 and 2014. Well-intentioned efforts to curb prescription opioid abuse have yielded new policies with unfortunate, unforeseen consequences for the 15% of the US population that suffer from chronic pain – nearly 45 million people.

Opioid abuse, misuse and overdose is a problem in The United States. You can’t turn on the TV or read a newspaper without some mention of the epidemic. This issue has caused the practice of prescribing or taking narcotic pain medication to be looked at under a microscope. Patients are fearful to use some necessary pain medication, because they may become addicted. Other patients who genuinely do have pain and need medication are having a tougher time obtaining the help they need. The problem of abuse and addiction is tough to solve since for some people the medications are the only way they can function and live a semi-normal life. A patient with pain may be hesitant to visit the doctor and

According to the Department of Health and Human services, over 650,000 opioid prescriptions are dispensed in one day. This translates to around 230 million prescriptions each year. This amount just barely falls short of being high enough to give every adult in the United States their own bottle of opioid pills. The loose prescribing habits of medical professionals are to blame for these absurdly high numbers. Current doctors will prescribe an opiate-based painkiller for anything from a backache, toothache, to even headaches. To give patients “highly addictive” drugs for low scale chronic pain over the three-days recommended max incurs high risk for tolerance, dependence, and potential addiction to opioids. Some would argue that doctors are simply doing their job by solving their patient’s pain problem and that people should not intrude upon a medical professional’s expertise. However, while doctors should be unbiased pillars of medical advice and treatment, they should also take into account the risks involved with their treatment for their patient’s sake. Particularly for opioid prescriptions, doctors should have to abide by dosing criteria, receive guidance on when to seek consultation, and know how to use their state’s prescription drug monitoring program (Alexander et al., 2015). According to Alexander et al., (2015) Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs) are underutilized by 81% of all prescribers.

Jamison RN, Serraillier J, Michna E. Assessment and treatment of abuse risk in Opioid prescribing for chronic pain. Pain Res Cl. 2011;2011:1-12. doi:10.1155/2011/941808.

A new escalating drug abuse epidemic has come about in the recent years; people are now choosing prescription pills as their new drug of choice. The use, abuse and death caused by prescription drugs has increased significantly within the past couple years. All types of prescription pills are more easily accessible from their doctors, family members or off the street. Doctors are handing out prescriptions for pills, such as pain management pills, muscle relaxers, and anti-anxiety, like they are candy and not potentially dangerous to the consumers. In today’s society doctors are over prescribing pills to Americans and the prescription pill distribution should be more closely monitored and controlled. Although there are people who benefit

House Bill 7095, relating to Prescription Drugs or more commonly known as the “Pill Mill Bill” was passed by the Florida Legislature on May 6, 2011, and signed by Governor Rick Scott on June 3, 2011. In essence, H.B. 7095 regulates all facets of the prescribing and dispensing of pain killers and controlled substances, from distributors all the way to pharmacists and doctors. One of the main aspects of the bill is its enforcement of s. 456.44 F.S.; which deals with the dispensing of prescription drugs such as pain killers and controlled

Prescription drug abuse is an increasingly rampant public health issue. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has affirmed that the United States is in the midst of an epidemic of prescription drug overdose deaths (2010a). Drug overdose, especially related to the non-sanctioned consumption of prescription opioid analgesic (painkiller) drugs, is the second leading cause of deaths from unintentional injuries in the United States, surpassed only by motor vehicle mortalities (Girion, Glover, & Smith, 2011). In 2005, President Bush signed the National All Schedule Prescription Electronic Reporting Act (NASPER), which amends section 390O of the Public Health

Statistics for the growing prescription opioid abuse problem are alarming. Prescription analgesics are the second highest dispensed drug in the healthcare system. (Younger, et al., 2011). In 1991, approximately 76 million prescriptions were written for opioids. By 2011, that number had grown to 219 million (Jamison & Mao, 2015). Around 63 million people in the U.S. have used nonmedical prescription

Prescription opioid misuse has emerged as a significant public health issue in the United States. Since the late 1990s, nationwide sales of prescription opioids have risen 4-fold, and with this, the rate of admissions for substance use treatment and the rate of death from opioid overdose have grown proportionately.1

The purpose of this report is to show the major problems we face in America if we do not address the misuse of prescription drugs. America’s pain pill and heroin addiction exceeds that of all other countries in the world, statistics from the UN office on Drugs and Crimes show. This report will show emphasis on the misuse of prescription drugs and some of the causes.