“The moral test of a government is how it treats those who are at the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those who are in the shadow of life, the sick and the needy, and the handicapped.” – Hubert Humphrey
passionate pachyderms
Pharmacist Steve steve@steveariens.com 502.938.2414
It has been a few years since Walgreens has implemented their “good faith policy” on filling opiates and allows their Pharmacist to “BLACK BALL” a pt from all 8500 stores… and turn down filling any particular prescription if no more than “they don’t feel comfortable”… I know I have seen statements from numerous pts – mostly chronic pain pts – they have refuse to spend money at a Walgreens over their “good faith policy”… I know that I stopped over 4 yrs ago..after being denied a C-II Rx filled and we had some $15,000+/yr of Rx filled.. But don’t worry about Walgreens… they are buying/merging with the 4500 Rite Aid Stores… so as soon as that happens they will be able to report increased sales year over year… but if people keep refusing to deal with their “good faith policy” and it will only take a year until their year to year sales will start falling again…
Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc , the largest U.S. drugstore chain, reported a surprise drop in quarterly sales, hurt by a weak euro and pound and lower reimbursements for generic drugs.
Net income attributable to Walgreens fell to $1.05 billion, or 97 cents per share, in the first quarter ended Nov. 30, from $1.11 billion, or $1.01 per share, a year earlier.
Sales fell to $28.50 billion from $29.03 billion.
Walgreens, which is awaiting regulatory approval for its $9.5 billion takeover of smaller rival Rite Aid Corp , said it expects to close the deal early this year.
There has been a small dedicated groups of chronic painers that have finished the list of twitter address for both House/Senate and working on list of TV/news media.
How is the next step in the program is to get those in the chronic pain community to send us links from local news media about how those in the chronic pain community have been harmed by the actions of the DEA,CDC and other entities..
Those incidents where pts commit suicide because their doc was raided and they were tossed to the street and only the local media will cover the story.
The DEA has 26 district offices & HQ that has a well organized press release machine that has a constant stream of press releases to the media and others…
Those in the chronic pain community needs to send those web story links to painedlives@gmail.com… the tweets will be sent out under the @painedlives account… the chronic painer will remain anonymous.
The Twitter account @painedlives can only be tracked back to ME !!!
If you are a chronic painer… can READ… have a computer… can CUT/PASTE a website address and send it to painedlives@gmail.com… YOU CAN HELP THE PROGRAM.
If this works and we can educated the politicians/bureaucrats and create a discussion then we can expand to state legislators/bureaucrats.
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Indiana’s incoming governor pledged Thursday to roll back some restrictions on needle exchanges that his predecessor, Vice President-elect Mike Pence, signed into law as part of the state’s response to its largest HIV epidemic.
Republican Eric Holcomb, who takes office next week, said he believes local officials — not the state — should be able to authorize needle exchanges, a move he characterized as a “prudent step.” Health experts, who criticized Pence’s response to the crisis, say exchanges can dramatically curtail deadly outbreaks by allowing intravenous drug users to swap dirty needles for clean ones.
“When we open the newspaper and you see the obituaries it’s heartbreaking and we know that this is just the tip of the iceberg,” Holcomb said during a news conference outlining an agenda for his first year in office. “We know it goes much, much deeper below the surface affecting our families.”
A spokesman for Pence, who backed Holcomb to succeed him as governor after Donald Trump tapped him for the Republican ticket, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In 2015, Scott County, in southern Indiana, saw the number of people infected with the HIV skyrocket, with nearly 200 people testing positive for the virus in a span of months. Indiana law at the time prohibited needle exchanges, exacerbating the outbreak, which primarily infected intravenous users of the painkiller Opana.
Pence had long opposed needle exchanges but was persuaded to issue an executive order allowing one in Scott County, which lies about 30 miles north of Louisville, Kentucky. And despite his own misgivings — Pence said he didn’t support the exchanges as an “anti-drug policy” — he signed a law allowing the state government to approve them on a case-by-case basis.
At the time, Pence said he was acting to halt the spread of the virus “despite my reservations” about providing clean needles to addicts.
But the process has been fraught with bureaucracy and often put road blocks up in impoverished areas where multiple counties sought to pool resources, said Beth Meyerson, co-director of the Rural Center for AIDS/STD Prevention at Indiana University.
About 25 counties have taken steps to adopt needle exchanges, but currently only three counties, including Scott County, have active programs, according to state data and Meyerson
“This is terrific news,” said Meyerson. “Now it’s a different day and a different administration.”
Meyerson urged Holcomb and lawmakers to also make more money available for the areas that are hardest hit, which are often poor. A 2015 report by the Trust for America’s Health ranked Indiana 43rd in public health spending, with $13.08 spent per capita. She also encouraged Holcomb to seek federal funding for needles exchanges — something Pence didn’t do.
“The prior governor (Pence) did not want federal funding drawn down for anything, let alone public health,” she said.
Holcomb’s proposal is part of a package of initiatives he is launching to combat drug abuse. He also wants to stiffen punishment for pharmacy robberies and limit the number of narcotics that can be prescribed, or picked up from a pharmacy, at one time. Holcomb has also created a position in his administration that will serve as the state’s drug czar and look for ways to increase funding for efforts like needle exchanges.
One factor that made Indiana’s 2015 outbreak so severe is that the virus spread quickly while lawmakers and Pence contemplated what action to take.
Holcomb said these are matters that local officials can best address because they “have the ability to get out of the gate fast.”
Preexisting psychiatric and behavioral conditions and psychoactive medication use are associated with subsequent claims of prescription opioids, according to a study published in Pain.
The preexisting psychiatric and behavioral conditions include substance use disorders (SUDs), opioid use disorders (OUDs), suicide attempts and other self-injury, depression, and motor vehicle crashes.
Patrick D. Quinn, PhD, from the Department of Psychological and Brain services at Indiana University, and colleagues examined health insurance claims among 10,311,961 opioid recipients, ages 14 years and older (18 and older for motor vehicle crashes) who had at least 12 calendar months of continuous enrollment of a filled opioid prescription.
The researchers evaluated how opioid receipt differed among patients with and without a wide range of preexisting psychiatric and behavioral conditions. These include OUD, nonopioid SUD, depressive disorder, uncertain or definite suicide attempt or self-injury (combined), anxiety disorder, sleep disorder, and motor-vehicle crashes. Also included were psychoactive medications such as antidepressants and mood stabilizers.
The first objective was to estimate the extent to which prior psychiatric conditions, motor vehicle crashes, and psychoactive medications would predict claims for prescription opioids. The most common condition was depression, diagnosed in 8.5% of cases, while suicide-attempts and self injury were the least common conditions (0.1%). Patients with prior OUD or nonopioid SUD diagnosis had 16% or 11% greater odds, respectively, of receiving opioids than did patients without these conditions.
The second objective was to estimate the extent to which prior psychiatric conditions, motor vehicle crashes, and psychoactive medications would predict receipt of long-term opioids among opioid recipients. Increases in risk for long-term opioid receipt in adjusted Cox regressions ranged from approximately 1.5-fold for prior ADHD medication prescriptions (hazard ratio [HR], 1.53) to approximately 3-fold for prior nonopioid SUD diagnoses (HR, 3.15) and nearly 9-fold for prior OUD diagnoses (HR, 8.70). The probability of transitioning from first fill to long-term opioids was 1.3% by 1.5 years after the first prescription fill, 2.1% by 3 years, 3.7% by 6 years, and 5.3% by 9 years.
“Patients with prior psychiatric diagnoses, suicide attempts or other self-injury, and motor vehicle crashes were at greater risk of transitioning from an incident opioid prescription fill to receipt of long-term opioids than were patients without prior psychiatric conditions,” said the authors. “Future studies assessing behavioral outcomes associated with opioid prescribing should consider preexisting psychiatric conditions.”
Where is all the anti-racial critics ? Where is the outrage of this happening to a mentally challenged/handicap/disabled person ? It reportedly took FACE BOOK… TWENTY FOUR HOURS to take this down. No wonder that Obama is not moving back to his home town of CHICAGO when he leaves the White House in a couple of weeks. Where in 2016, there was more MURDERS (762) than New York City and Los Angeles TOGETHER and Illinois has some of the TOUGHEST GUN LAWS in the country.
Hate crime and aggravated battery charges were filed against four African American suspects who police say bound, gagged and tortured a mentally challenged white male while shouting racial and anti-Donald Trump slurs, Fox News confirmed.
The two male and two female suspects — Jordan Hill, 18, Tesfaye Cooper, 18, Brittany Covington, 18, and Tanishia Covington, 24 — were set to appear in Central Bond Court on Friday afternoon.
Tesfaye Cooper, left, Jordan Hill, Tanishia Covington and Brittany Covington were each charged with a hate crime. (CPD)
Police became aware on Tuesday of the heinous video footage, FOX32 reported. In the clip, which allegedly was posted to one of the suspect’s Facebook feeds, an 18-year-old mentally disabled man was restrained and beaten. Later that day, authorities encountered the disoriented victim walking down a street wearing only shorts despite the cold weather.
“It makes you wonder what would make individuals treat somebody like that,” Police Supt. Eddie Johnson said during a Wednesday news conference. “I’ve been a cop for 28 years and I’ve seen things that you shouldn’t see. It still amazes me how you still see things that you just shouldn’t.”
“I’m not going to say it shocked me, but it was sickening.”
Police believe the incident began when the victim, who lives in Crystal Lake, met the group in Streamwood, a neighboring suburb. They then drove to Chicago in a stolen vehicle, FOX32 reported.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest wouldn’t say if he thought the incident was a hate crime, but did discuss the callous nature of the crime.
“They do demonstrate a level of depravity that is an outrage to a lot of Americans,” Earnest said. “I have not spoken to the president but I’m confident he would be angered by the images depicted.”
The victim was kept tied up with his mouth taped shut in an apartment on the city’s west side. The video showed him cowering in a corner while someone yelled “F— white people!” and “F— Donald Trump!” At one point in the video, the victim was held at knifepoint and told to curse the president-elect.
The victim was a classmate of one of the suspects,, investigators said, adding that he was held in the apartment for at least 24 hours, possibly as long as 48 hours.
The video showed the man being kicked and hit repeatedly, while his scalp was cut. The group apparently forced him to drink water from a toilet.
The suspects could be heard saying they wanted the video to go viral.
They now face a bevy of charges.
Hill was charged with aggravated kidnapping, hate crime, aggravated unlawful restraint, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, robbery, residential burglary; Cooper was charged with aggravated kidnapping, hate crime, aggravated unlawful restraint, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and residential burglary; Brittany Covington was charged with aggravated kidnapping, hate crime, aggravated unlawful restraint, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and residential burglary; Tanishia Covington was charged with aggravated kidnapping, hate crime, aggravated unlawful restraint and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.
Hill is from Carpentersville and the others are Chicago residents.
Independent community pharmacies have a new tool to help them promote the enhanced services that they provide their patients.
Irvine, California-based PrescribedWellness has expanded its software services offering to include promoting enhanced services via cloud-based data mining software.
“Community pharmacy lacked a centralized voice. We are creating a national voice for community pharmacy,” said PrescribedWellness CEO Al Babbington.
Here’s how it works
Patients or payers can log on to PrescribeWellness.com, www.prescribewellness.com then input a zip code and a map of community pharmacies in the area is displayed. They can enter the type of service they want (for example: smoking cessation or diabetes counseling) and a list of community pharmacies that provide the desired service is displayed.
PrescribeWellness has partnered with wholesale giants AmerisourceBergen and McKesson. They are also collaborating closely with NCPA as the official technology for their Simplify My Meds medication synchronization program.
“We are providing pharmacies with the tools and support to become high performers in Star Ratings and key performance measurements as well as to expand the population health and chronic care services they offer. This helps position our pharmacies for participation in NCPA-supported programs such as Community Pharmacies Enhanced Services Networks, added Babbington.
Joe Moose, PharmD, owner of Moose Pharmacy in North Carolina said that pharmacists have done a good job of telling each other how great they are at helping patients and reducing medical costs. “But we haven’t done a very good job telling people outside of pharmacy.”
Moose said that PrescribeWellness gives independent community pharmacies the opportunity to let the world know that they can affect health care.
“It lets patients and payers know that they can reach out to a higher quality pharmacy that’s performing enhanced services – and that you get a different outcome than you would from a pharmacy that’s not providing these enhanced services.”
Prescribe Wellness also provides pharmacists with data on where they might need to improve to provide the best outcome for the patient. For example: how to keep better track of patient adherence or helping to coordinate immunizations.
Pennsylvania has abt 13 million population or abt 4% of the USA population… so the 600 million to treat these inmates in PA could represent a 15 BILLION liability if you expand that to all the prison population in the USA. Any of these prisoners that also have HIV +and HEP B… the cost of treatment could be upwards of $750,000 PER PERSON. Is this a “taxpayer liability” because of the USA’s policy of treating the “brain disease” of addiction as a CRIME… which forces addicts to share needles and thus share whatever diseases any of the previous users of the needle had ? So much for our healthcare system’s goal of DISEASE PREVENTION
A federal judge on Tuesday ruled that Mumia Abu-Jamal should be provided new medications by the state to treat his hepatitis C infection.
U.S. District Judge Robert D. Mariani ordered that Abu-Jamal, who is serving life in prison for the 1981 killing of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner, must be seen by a doctor within 14 days to determine if there is a medical reason he should not get the expensive drugs.
If Abu-Jamal is medically cleared, the state must provide him with recently developed direct-acting antiviral medication, also known as DDA.
Susan McNaughton, a Department of Corrections spokeswoman, said, “We are reviewing the decision and cannot comment further at this time.” She did not elaborate.
The DOC has argued in court filings that Abu-Jamal has not met the criteria for treatment.
The state has about 7,000 inmates with hepatitis C, and treating them – at a cost of $84,000 to $90,000 per person – would cost $600 million.
Robert J. Boyle, a New York lawyer representing Abu-Jamal, said in a statement that he expected the state to appeal the ruling.
“The struggle is far from over: the DOC will no doubt appeal this ruling. But a victory!” Boyle said.
Bret Grote of the Abolitionist Law Center for drunk driving attorneys in Pittsburgh said the ruling was the first time “a federal court has ordered prison officials to provide an incarcerated patient with the new [hepatitis C] medications that came on the market in 2013.”
In 2015, Abu-Jamal, who spent 29 years on death row, was hospitalized after he fell into diabetic shock and was found to have hepatitis C. Lawyers filed suit that year to improve his medical treatment.
Mariani, a Scranton judge who sits in the Middle District of Pennsylvania, previously stated that the Department of Corrections’ interim protocol for treating hepatitis C “presents deliberate indifference to the known risks which follow from untreated chronic hepatitis C.”
But he ruled against Abu-Jamal because members of the department’s Hepatitis C Treatment Committee, which makes treatment decisions, had not been named as defendants. An amended complaint was filed in September.
Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther and sometime radio reporter, was found guilty of the Dec. 9, 1981, slaying of Faulkner, 25.
He was sentenced to death in 1982, but that sentence was overturned by a federal appeals court and reduced to life without parole.
Morgan Gilman, 21, of Manchester, New Hampshire got in her car and drove three hours to buy a supply of fentanyl.
When she arrived, she took the “normal amount” and got back in her car to drive home, but not before an ominous warning from the seller: “Be careful, it’s stronger this time.”
The next thing she remembers is waking up in the hospital, handcuffed to the bed with the worst headache of her life.
“I was doing about 80 on the highway when I o.d.’ed behind the wheel,” Gilman said.
The car rolled four times, she was told. She wasn’t wearing a seat belt, but somehow managed to stay inside the vehicle.
She was in a coma, but awoke a few hours later with a broken back.
“My dad was crying. I had no idea why I was there,” Gilman said. “My first thought was like ‘What is going on?'” she said.
After the harrowing experience, she said she decided to end her drug use.
“I was tired of living in my car, I was tired of needing it, I was tired that the first thing I thought about when I woke up was how to find drugs,” she told ABC News.
Gilman’s car accident was this past spring and she said she’s now been clean for seven months.
But many people don’t survive. Gilman said her best friend died of a drug overdose. And fentanyl — the deadly synthetic opioid that is quickly catching up to heroin as one of the most abused drugs — has been killing people at extraordinary rates.
Jack Date/ABC News
Morgan Gilman, 21, overdosed on fentanyl and got in a car accident last spring. She has been clean for 7 months.
Morgan lives at ground zero for the fentanyl epidemic. In the small state of New Hampshire, where there are typically less than 20 homicides a year, more than 400 people died from drug overdoses in 2015, according to FBIcrime data and New Hampshire officials. Around 70 percent of those were linked to Fentanyl, according to the New Hampshire State Police Forensic Laboratory.
The 2016 overdose deaths are expected to approach 500, according to New Hampshire’s lab. Final 2016 numbers aren’t yet available, as officials work through the backlog in drug processing.
Beginning in 2014, the state saw a huge spike in overdoses resulting in death, according to Timothy Pifer, Director of the New Hampshire State Police Forensic Laboratory.
“I’ve been involved in the forensic field here in New Hampshire for 27 years,” Pifer said, “and I lived through the crack epidemics and the methamphetamine, but we’ve never had deaths associated with it like we do now.”
He said he doesn’t believe it’s peaked yet.
The state lab receives about 750 new drug submissions every month, but can only process about 550, according to Pifer.
“Some days it feels like we’re shoveling sand against the tide in terms of getting the cases out,” he said.
While the Northeast has been hit hard, fentanyl is rapidly spreading across the United States.
DEA
Blender used to mix clandestine fentanyl.
The death rate from synthetic opioids, which include fentanyl, increased by about 72 percent between 2014 and 2015, according to a new CDC study. Law enforcement sources believe fentanyl is largely to blame.
For example, in Pennsylvania, there were 349 fentanyl-involved deaths in 2014, and 913 deaths in 2015, according to the DEA. In North Carolina, fentanyl-related deaths, went from 165 in 2014 to 226 last year. And that jumped to 321, according to the preliminary data for 2016 in the state.
In Florida, these deaths were up nearly 70 percent from 2014 to 2015. In Massachusetts they were up 20 percent during the same time period.
On New Year’s Eve, police in Methuen, Massachusetts were dispatched to a residence for a report of a baby in distress.
The ten-month-old child was transported to the hospital where she stopped breathing twice and had to be revived by staff, according to the Methuen Police Department.
Hospital tests indicate that the baby had fentanyl in her system, according to police.
“It’s heartbreaking to say the least. I mean it’s a 10-month-old baby,” said Lt. Michael Pappalaro.
The baby has since been released into the custody of a family member at a different residence and the incident is still under police investigation.
In an unrelated event two days later, Methuen police arrested a man who was allegedly in possession of $1.2 million dollars worth of fentanyl.
Police chief Joseph Solomon told ABC News that the fentanyl situation in his city is “horrible.”
The drug has become a major threat for law enforcement as well.
Fentanyl, which is used legally by medical professionals as a painkiller, is approximately 80 to 100 times stronger than morphine, and 25 to 40 times more potent than heroin, according to the DEA. Contact with just a few grains of the drug can kill.
“I felt like my body was shutting down,” one of the officers said in the video.
DEA agents are forced to wear cumbersome protective suits with oxygen tanks to make arrests and raid buildings.
The suits are so difficult to maneuver in that agents can only wear them for up to 15 minutes at a time, before they need a break.
DEA
Protective suits used to shield DEA agents from exposure to fentanyl during drug busts.
“If anything can be likened to a weapon of mass destruction in what it does to a community, it’s fentanyl,” said DEA Deputy Administrator Jack Riley.
Fentanyl is a Schedule II synthetic opioid that is approximately 80 to 100 times stronger than morphine, and 25 to 40 times more potent than heroin.”
Contact with just a few grains of the drug can kill.
The Drug Enforcement Administration recently sent a video warning, featuring two investigators from Atlantic County, N.J., that accidentally inhaled the drug after a seizure, to police around the country warning of its dangers.
“I felt like my body was shutting down,” one of the officers said in the video.
DEA agents are forced to wear cumbersome protective suits with oxygen tanks to make arrests and raid buildings.
The suits are so difficult to maneuver in that agents can only wear them for up to 15 minutes at a time, before they need a break.
“If anything can be likened to a weapon of mass destruction in what it does to a community, it’s fentanyl,” said former DEA Deputy Administrator Jack Riley.
Fentanyl is being produced secretly in Mexico and is also being imported directly from China, according to the DEA.
“People on the west coast in Silicon Valley working on the new iPhone, I think the Sinaloa cartel is working on the next product they’re going to market to the addiction base in the United States. That is just how sophisticated they are,” he said.
Cartels are marketing it to dealers, who are pushing it on populations with opioid addiction, resulting in death.
“That’s how hell-bent they are, on making a buck. And I got to tell you, across the country, they don’t care who dies,” he said.
The drug is cheaper and easier to make then heroin, which requires a growing season.
Some people seek out fentanyl, while others don’t realize what they are selling, buying and using.
Natasha Symonds, 26, overdosed just six days before she spoke with ABC News — it was her third overdose.
Symonds used heroin for years, but had never heard of fentanyl until the first time she wound up in the hospital.
“It ended up in what I was doing and I didn’t even know,” she said about the fentanyl.
But that wasn’t the end. She moved out of her house, disconnected from her family and continued to use.
Like Morgan, she also overdosed while driving. The person she was driving with got her help.
“I woke up this time in a different city that I’ve never really been in,” she said.
She was told that despite the dose of Narcan — a drug used to revive opioid overdose victims — she almost didn’t wake up again.
After that she sought help.
“You don’t know what’s in your stuff every time you do it. And you think you know. But one day you’re going to pick it up and you’re going to do it and you’re not going to wake back up again,” she said.
For the millions of American patients experiencing an acute medical need or living with chronic pain, opioids, when prescribed appropriately, can allow patients to manage their pain as well as significantly improve their quality of life when combined with a program of effective integrated health management.
In recent years, the FDA and CDC have become increasingly concerned about the abuse and misuse of opioid products, which have sadly reached epidemic proportions in certain parts of the United States. While the value of and access to these drugs has been a consistent source of public debate, the FDA has been challenged with determining how to balance the need to ensure continued access to those patients who rely on continuous pain relief while addressing the ongoing concerns about abuse and misuse.
In 2009, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) asked the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for a recommendation regarding whether to change the schedule for hydrocodone combination products, such as Vicodin. The proposed change was from Schedule III to Schedule II, which increased the controls on these products.
In 2015, the CDC contracted with a panel of experts to make recommendations for the development of guidelines designed to address perceived problems with increasing overdose deaths associated with the use of prescription medications and illicit, illegally obtained opiates. These Guidelines for prescribing opiates for persons with chronic pain were issued in March of 2016.
Throughout the period from 2012 to 2016, states began to pass legislation which changed prescribing practices for persons with chronic pain who utilize opiates and other schedule II medications for pain management.
States have devised and install prescription drug management programs (PDMPs), initiated drug take back programs and limited access by making changes to prescribing practices.
Both CDC and FDA have professed their desire to work with professional organizations, consumer and patient groups, and industry to ensure that prescriber and patient education tools are readily available so that these products are properly prescribed and appropriately used by the patients who need them most.
Nevertheless, reports from consumers indicate that their access to appropriate pain management has been disrupted by changes to scheduling, the adoption of CDC’s Guidelines for Chronic Pain Prescribing, and changes to state prescribing laws.
The following drugs have been reclassified from Schedule III to Schedule II:
Hydromorphone (any brand, any dose)
Oxycodone (any brand, any dose)
Hydrocodone (any brand, any dose)
Morphine (any brand, any dose)
Oxymorphone (any brand, any dose)
Methadone (any brand, any dose)
Transdermal fentanyl (any brand, any dose)
Transdermal buprenorphine (any brand, any dose)
Ritalin (any brand, any dose)
Adderall (any brand, any dose)
Reports of difficulties in access to support have emerged from the patient community. These reports include-
Different restrictions on opiate prescribing levels have emerged from state to state.
Different physician qualifications for prescribing and training have appeared as a function of differing state laws.
Refill practices are now variable from pharmacy to pharmacy and state to state.
Forced substitutions with less effective prescription medications.
Forced acceptance of interventional procedures (injections, pumps, or stimulators) as a condition for prescribing oral forms of opiates.
Physician discharge of patients wit
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An Indianapolis physician whose patients were told at multiple CVS pharmacies that their prescriptions couldn’t be filled because the doctor had been arrested or was suspected of running a pill mill won a defamation judgment against the drugstore chain.
Dr. Anthony Mimms was granted summary judgment Tuesday on his defamation claim against CVS. A doctor since 2004, he had practiced with Rehabilitation Associates of Indiana until November 2013, when he left to form his own pain management practice.
Soon afterward, his patients were refused prescriptions in documented incidents at multiple Indianapolis CVS locations as well as at stores in Greenfield, McCordsville and Rushville. Pharmacists and technicians at these stores variously told Mimms’ patients that he had been arrested, that he was under DEA investigation, that his license had been revoked, or other reasons why they were not filling prescriptions he had written.
Judge Tanya Walton Pratt in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, Indianapolis Division, granted Mimms’ motion for summary judgment on his defamation claim and denied CVS’ cross-motion for judgment in its favor.
“The Court finds that, when viewed in context and given its plain meaning, the statements: ‘Dr. Mimms’ license has been suspended or revoked;’ ‘Dr. Mimms has been arrested, and if he hasn’t been he soon would be, therefore, [] find a new doctor;’ ‘CVS no longer fills prescriptions for Dr. Mimms because Dr. Mimms has been to jail, and is a bad doctor;’ and ‘Dr. Mimms is under DEA investigation’ amount to communications with defamatory imputation,” Pratt wrote. “ … (T)he Court determines the above statements are defamation per se.”
Pratt wrote CVS had failed to present sufficient evidence that the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Indiana Attorney General’s Office were investigating Mimms, rejecting its affirmative defense of truth. CVS also acted with actual malice when an employee stated Mimms’ license had been suspended or revoked, which was untrue and unverifiable. CVS’s argument of qualified privilege for its employees also failed.
Mimms also provided evidence that the statements made by CVS employees violated company protocol that expressly states, “Under no circumstances are you to make any disparaging comments about the customer’s prescriber.” Examples of what employees are instructed not to say expressly include: a doctor is under investigation, is operating a pill mill, is going to lose a license, is or should go to jail or be arrested.
Left to be decided at trial are whether other statements made by CVS employees are defamatory and the amount of Mimms’ damages.
Walgreens reports surprise drop in quarterly sales
Pence’s Indiana successor backs fewer needle exchange limits
Federal judge orders state to provide Mumia Abu-Jamal with hepatitis C treatment
Fentanyl Deaths Have Spiked Across the US, With No Sign of Slowing Down
