State Regulators Punish Doctor for Cutting a Pain Patient’s Opioid Dose and Dropping Him After He Became Suicidal – Reason.com – Jacob Sullum | July 2019
Here’s another encouraging article that I hope is only the beginning of a return to sanity about opioids in this country:
A New Hampshire doctor recently got into trouble with state regulators because of the way he treated a pain patient.
But in a refreshing twist that suggests state officials are beginning to recognize the harm caused by restricting access to pain medication, the New Hampshire Board of Medicine reprimanded and fined the doctor not for prescribing opioids but for refusing to do so.
The settlement stems from a June 2018 complaint in which a patient reported that Greenspan, “after treating him for years and prescribing the same dosages of pain medication, suddenly reduced his medications, which led to increased pain and anxiety, and suicidal ideations.”
I have a relative who has had to threaten his doctor for trying to pull this crap. Doc didn’t like being told that he would file patient abandonment with state board so, for now, dr backed off.
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Wow, so this really works! It looks like we have a way to defend ourselves after all: by appealing to our state’s Medical Board.
It’s not surprising that with all the rules and regulations being made by non-medical people, these organizations of medical experts have a much more reasonable view of opioid prescribing.
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Worked for now. The doc complains every time he calls in for his refills (3 days early per his “contract”) and usually delays it a day or two. Passive aggressive power move. Petty.
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My state is much too corrupt for any kind of action like this. They allowed physicians to just turn away patients, and essentially black list patients. Most of our politicians and policy makers belief that acupuncture can be used in the operating room. Our state strategically blamed people with chronic pain, and physicians for their long running heroin problem. Even though they applied draconian restrictions on pain medications long before the CDC crackdown, they chose not to track the impact on pain patients and physicians. They basically drove pain physicians out of practice. Due to the shortage of physicians anyway, they chose to market alternative medicine, on state websites. There is no evidence that any of it works, but if they don’t count any of the indicators and carefully control the false narrative, unscrupulous fraudsters can make money. They are Gas Lighting us all!
I worry about people I know who have been considering suicide due to the ignorance lies and corruption. In my state they are making money exploiting people with chronic pain, lying about outcomes, and keeping the continuing suicides and bad healthcare outcomes out of the news.
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