Pain meds shortage changing how North Texas patients are treated

http://www.wfaa.com/article/news/pain-meds-shortage-changing-how-north-texas-patients-are-treated/287-530782803

His pain has eased now, but two weeks ago, “It was excruciating. I’d say it was about an 8 [out of 10 ], when they were asking me at the hospital.”

Several North Texas hospitals are acknowledging a shortage in powerful pain medications.

It is a nationwide shortage, believed to be caused in large part by a move the Drug Enforcement Administration made to combat opioid abuse.

According to W. Stephen Love, President and CEO of the Dallas-Fort Worth Hospital Council, in 2017 the DEA lowered the limits regulating how much of these drugs pharmaceutical manufacturers can produce.

 “They were doing that to be part of a solution,” Love explained. “The DEA recognized that all of us have to be working on this opioid crisis.”

The result is a change in the way patients like Gilbert Cavello are treated.

His pain has eased now, but two weeks ago, “It was excruciating. I’d say it was about an 8 [out of 10], when they were asking me at the hospital.”

Cavello is paralyzed from the chest down and is prone to bladder infections. He says the last infection was terrible, and his treatment was different.

“Usually, they automatically start me on antibiotic and then, to ease pain, they put me on Dilaudid, but this time they put me on morphine and it wouldn’t help, it wouldn’t last,” he said.

Gilbert was a patient at UT Southwestern Medical Center, one of the North Texas hospitals experiencing the shortage. Particularly drugs such as Dilaudid, fentanyl and morphine are in short supply.

Love says doctors he’s spoken with are working closely with pharmacists, clinical staff and nurses to coordinate pain management. Parkland Hospital, UT Southwestern and Methodist Health System say staff are transitioning patients to oral medication when appropriate, as pills are more readily available than those that are intravenously delivered.

Love said he believes hospitals are also being more candid with patients.

“Probably, in some ways, the pendulum may have swung too far as far as trying to keep the patient experience extremely pain free,” Love said. “We want it to be pain-free but in the same token we want it to be done in a very responsible way.”

Love says the shortage could potentially ease if the DEA adjusts the production limits.

 But, changing patients’ expectations could take time.

“People need it, especially those in severe pain like me,” Cavello said.

5 Responses

  1. Regardless of other manufacturing issues, which have always been there & always will be there and that goes for any & all products produced in any country. Thats just part of manufacturing.

    But when you are talking about medications in America, its absurd!!! Its 2018 !!!! Not 1818 !!!! Should we go back to biting a bullet and taking a shot of whiskey? Shit! Why not just go back to sterilizing the knife & wound with whiskey?? Take anesthesia away too!!!
    Don’t get me started on alcohol consumption!!

    Most people would feel differently if it was your loved one laying in a burn center and there’s no pain meds to give them intravenously!!! Imagine patients throat damaged & can’t swallow a pill, a pill that would do absolutely nothing for a burn victim!! That’s what they are giving patients, a pill. Big deal.

    I’ve been in serious car crashes and thank God for pain meds in the emergency rooms! That was in 1985, 1996 and no one said take an aspirin and tough in out!! Mr sessions!!! Hopefully you or your loved ones don’t ever get into a car crash or become a burn victim!

    Limiting medication in a hospitall where its desperately needed all the time is NOT going to effect the so called opioid epidemic one little bit!!

    Just because one is prescribed a opiate in the ER, Surgery or while admitted, does not mean one bit that they will be given a script to take home.
    And if they are given a script at discharge, it is the patients problem to be accountable & responsible for that script!! Don’t blame all the other pain patients for the immaturity of others!!

    A hospital/ pharmacy should be a place where meds are monitored the closest to prevent stealing or mishandling, if not better look at your employees better!

    Stop blaming pain patients for every little tho g associated with opioids!! Drug dealers ate going to sell drugs no matter what!

    The “death penalty”? For drug dealers, you got a catch them and convict them first! You can’t catch n convict them all now or we wouldn’t have the problems we have!!
    But you know that! That’s why you take meds away from people who have managed for years on them without issues. But its the easiest to take it away so you can say “look what we did”! We stopped all these scripts from being filled. If pain patients were the ones over dosing there wouldn’t be any patients left to get scripts, we would all be dead by now!!

    So that shows you you got the wrong people!!! Let the hospitals have their meds for patients, let the pain patients have their scripts so they can get back to work to support their families, and you try and kill the drug dealers……never going to end! Supply & Demand. Economics 101.

  2. I know this his story and this story is due to the shortage.This brought back a memory for me. In 1993,1995 and 1998. I had double jaw surgeries. I was given darvocet before and during my hospital stay’s. These jaw surgeries were the worst pain ever, but I never was given any thing to get rid of my pain all the way even right after surgery. And I had three different surgeons each time. You talk about “toughening it out”. Lol. I still remember the pain after they removed my face and sewed it back on three times. Just breathing moved your muscles and hurt. My point is they did’nt take all your pain away then back then. Wonder why?

  3. Theres a whole long list of IV meds and IM meds that can’t be used because of particulate matter contamination from various manufacturers, I’m not sticking up for the DEA but once again the problem is more complex than Loves simplistic response.

    • Over the last decade as insurance companies wanted to pay less and less for generics…the generic companies consolidated… to gain economy of scale… we got down to 1-2 companies producing a specific product or lines of products and running at near capacity.. when they have a manufacturing problem.. it all starts hitting the fan.. These companies schedule equipment to produce enough of one or more products to last several months.. if a production unit has to shut down and/or destroy/recall all or a large quantity of product.. once things has been corrected.. future production has to be rescheduled and run the risk of other products becoming out of stock… When things were primarily brand name meds… this did not happen because they had enough manufacturing reserve capacity to compensate. the only time that I can remember a brand name shortage was when Motrin was introduced in the early 70’s and UpJohn underestimated the demand that this new – and only – NSAID hit the market. It took them 3-6 months to get a new plant build to meet demand.

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