I got this email today:
Steve:
I just had to comment on that email. I directed a statewide poison center, two centers covered about 2.4 million citizens.
I worked for many years, but now retired…
We could receive tens of thousands calls per year, about half of which were for pill ID’s. I had long been aware that 80% of the pill ID’s we got were for controlled substances (which I believe make up 16% of all prescriptions, more or less). This meant I was QC’ing druggies or diverters. I even had nurses overhear discussions of exactly how to defeat the non-soluble oxycontins with explicit instruction for preparing then for IV administration.
We collected names (usually false) along with caller ID numbers (rarely incorrect). The nurses even came to recognize some numbers from which we’d receive multiple calls per week.
I was proscribed from using the controlled substance prescription database in our state unless I was actually practicing pharmacy and considering whether to dispense a controlled substance to a given individual – being reminded that doing so otherwise would constitute a felony in my state.
I finally went to the local Sheriff who was a personal friend as well as representative of an agency which did not have to comply with HIPPA. I sent about 2,000 zip codes, names, and phone numbers to one of his analysts, but never got a response from his department, even though I had offered to send call recordings if he wished.
How much is law enforcement doing to find and deter diverters? Not much.
What’s more, I offered this information to State Public Health, DEA, Narcotics enforcement at the state level and got only silence for answers.
Just thought you might want this personal experience to spread around when anybody says that the decision is all on the dispensing pharmacist.
What is the primary reason that the DEA goes after drug stores/Pharmacists and not drug dealers… Pharmacists don’t normally carry AK-47 and shoot at DEA staff and Pharmacies keep better records.. which the DEA can use to prove that they can fine the hell out of you … If you worked for the DEA.. which one would you go after ?
Filed under: General Problems
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