re: "An Inside Look at the Opioid Crisis that Destroyed a Town"

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Or you reach the point of getting tired of the addiction and withdrawal and quit, like many people have.

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bingo

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You do realize that Drs created this mess for the most part right?

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::oprah meme::

You get some painkillers! Everyone gets some painkillers!

I just think the government should stay out of regulating what doctors can and cannot prescribe.

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You do realize that Drs created this mess for the most part right?

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They were forced. The government created this problem. Specifically, the Joint Commission (private contractors) hired by the government to assign accreditation to hospitals

Back in late ‘99 or early ‘00 pain was made the fifth vital sign. Pain questions were asked on every assessment performed on a patient, regardless of complaint. After treatment, these questions were required to be asked again. In order for a hospital to maintain accreditation, these assessments and treatment outcomes were only deemed successful if pain was either resolved or improved significantly. Every hospital was, and is, required to mail out a patient satisfaction survey to every patient treated. These surveys also include pain questions such as ‘was your pain treated and are you satisfied with the way that it was treated?’. May not be the exact wording but that’s the gist of it.

Here’s the meat of it and the catalyst for the tragedy that we are seeing unfold today. Hospitals are then graded on how well they performed in those satisfaction surveys and how compliant they have been on treating pain. Patient treatment charts are also reviewed as to pain treatment. The hospital’s compliance or noncompliance directly affects the proportion of Medicare and Medicaid funds that they are repaid for the services that they rendered.

Doctors that worked for hospitals were leaned on hard to make pain a priority by the hospitals. There was nothing subtle about it, either. I saw it personally on a small scale working in four ERs during that time. It was a huge change. Everyone that I worked with predicted the outcome that we see today. But everyone’s hands were tied. This problem was created and is maintained by our government.

They hit the hospitals right in the wallet with their good intentions and pharmaceutical companies exploded into the huge entities that we see today.

It’s hard to believe that this happened in less than two decades.