Concern over Doctor Shopping and Prescription Drug Abuse in CA
Last Updated on Saturday, 16 January 2010 01:53 Written by Nic Saturday, 16 January 2010 01:51
Doctor shopping has become a common problem in the state of California. Back in the year 2003, two children of a person called Bob Pack were killed by a driver who was involved in prescription drugs abuse. Bob Pack then became involved himself in finding out more about this issue of prescription drug abuse. He then went on to launch a foundation on his children’s name. This great man also offered to raise more than a $3 million for funding a state database that will let the doctors of pharmacists of California to see if their patients are doctor shopping. Doctor shopping is a popular term used for an act where the patients get prescriptions to be able to buy the drugs even if it is for non medical reasons. One of the many negative consequences of such fragmentation is how ridiculously easy it can be to get drugs. There are many patients who resort to highly addictive painkillers like OxyContin or Percocet in their desperation even when they know they really do not require it. They keep hopping from one doctor to the other until they finally find some physician who is willing to write them a prescription.
So, very recently the Attorney General of California Gerry Brown took up Bob Pack on this offer of his. According to Brown’s statement each year thousand of medical practitioners in the state check the prescription history of their patients but even then the current database of California is not at all easy to access. So, he added that if California can put up this database information up the internet with a real time access then the authorized medical practitioners and the pharmacies of the state will get the technology tool to fight the cause which has become a major burden to the state’s healthcare system. The current database of the state contains millions of entries of the popularly abused drugs which includes Vicodin. Around 60,000 queries are received every year. Mainly the queries are answered through fax and phone and can actually take days.
In his statement to the Los Angeles Times, Pack declared that the online state database should be functional in ten more months and this time the results can be expected to be instantaneous. However, with this the concerns just don’t fade out completely. The director of San Diego Privacy Rights Clearinghouse felt that even though this surely makes a great system but then again if data becomes accessible without authorization, then the common people can gain access to it easily and prescription drug abuse in the state can take a worse shape. So, the director also added that the patients of California State should acquire the habit of reviewing their self drug histories and ensure accuracy.
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Great post. I learned some very useful information from it. I have been struggling with addiction myself for a lot of my life, so what you wrote really meant a lot to me. Take it one day at a time!