When States Turn Overly Strict on Pain Medication Prescriptions

It's no secret that pain management medications are a considerable problem in the United States, and the problem will not be going away anytime soon. We know from a recent study published by the Institute of Medicine that there are over 110 million people in United States suffering from acute or chronic pain, with a total annual cost of over $530 billion.

We also know from the same study that even though the cost of pain management in United States is well over $530 billion per year, the amount spent on research studies is between $200 and $300 million, which is less than 1/10 the amount of the cost of the problem. So it is obvious that more research needs to be performed to help find new ways of managing pain in United States.

Unfortunately one of the things that is being seen in numerous states now are onerously strict new pain management rules that are leaving patients without care at all. Unfortunately one of the stereotypes that gets thrown to pain management patients is that they are all drug seekers. In fact we know this is simply not the case, as there are certain patients who have conditions that are not amenable to either surgery or interventional pain management procedures any more.

Once a pain management doctor or a primary care doctor is duped by a few patients, it becomes very difficult and also very disappointing for that doctor to continue to prescribe pain medications not being able to delineate between real pain patients and fakers. So what may occur is that as states turn to more restrictive policies on prescribing pain medication, that physician may turn around and say "I'm just not going to prescribe any narcotics at all anymore".

In most states back in the 1980s, pain medications were under prescribed and patients were being undertreated. As a result of this there was a push to start treating pain appropriately, and this turned into a period of lax opiate prescribing which then caused a spike in overdoses. With the new statistics that are out for pain medication prescriptions showing a 100% increase over last five years across the country, a lot of states like Washington are now passing laws making it very difficult to effectively prescribe medications to patients in need.

The result is typically that emergency rooms, specialists, or primary care doctors who are extremely busy decide that it's too much trouble to treat patients with the opiate medications and simply just stop prescribing them all together. The result? This will lead to an even worse problem where scores of patients now have no treatment for their pain, and end up having to seek out new providers who do not know them at all and have reason to be suspicious because it often times is unclear why that patient is having to seek out a new provider.

There is no doubt that with the onset of pill mills in United States and the growing epidemic of pain in this country there are a significant number of patients who are faking their situation. However, what could eventually happen is that with such strict rules regarding pain medication prescriptions that a significant amount of providers will just simply stop prescribing any narcotics, which will then leave a substantial amount of patients under treated again which was the problem back in the 1980s this event you let this problem to begin with.