Knowing legitimate vs. illegitimate claims of chronic pain
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No comments [ Add Comment ]By Jesse Fruhwirth
Standard-Examiner Davis Bureau
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Ogden Police Chief and state Sen. Jon Greiner said the system should identify more than 71 individuals per year who may be doctor shopping.
"We are quite literally killing too many people with what should be a protected item," Greiner said. "The doctors are saying, 'I will manage a patient's pain,' Law enforcement is saying 'The addictive nature of the pain medication is making people crooks and thieves.' "
John Carter is a detective for the Davis County Drug Court.
He said doctors need to be more skeptical of patients, many of whom injure themselves on purpose to justify another prescription for pain killers.
"(Doctors) have a responsibility to check (the database). How often doctors use this, I do not know. ... I don't think most of them probably utilize it," he said.
Arthur Lipman, director of the University of Utah's Pain Management Center, agrees that doctors are not checking the registry as often as they should, but said making use of the database mandatory is going too far.
"It's being underutilized now. To insist it is used completely would be going from too far on one side to much too far on the other," he said.
Checking the database could become too time-consuming.
Lipman and Carter agree on one thing. An important solution is to educate doctors.
"I think a lot of (doctors) don't understand addiction," Carter said.
Lipman agreed but re-emphasized that pain medications are very important to the patients who need them. Those patients, he said, are the ones doctors need to be able to identify.
"It's becoming increasingly important for all clinicians to become more knowledgeable of chronic pain, both legitimate and illegitimate claims of it," Lipman said. "If you talk to any generalist (doctor) about who are the most difficult patients they see, frequently they're going to say pain-management patients."
Public affairs representatives at Ogden Regional Hospital and Davis Hospital and Medical Center said they did not have any doctors familiar enough with the continued use of Oxycodone to comment on the story. Lora Kier, public relations representative at Davis, referred calls to the Pain Management Center.
