Pubdate: Thu, 21 Jan 2016
Source: Boston Globe (MA)
Copyright: 2016 Globe Newspaper Company
Contact: http://services.bostonglobe.com/news/opeds/letter.aspx?id=6340
Website: http://bostonglobe.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/52
Author: Milton J. Valencia

OPIOID TASK FORCE WILL TARGET MDS, PHARMACISTS

Citing the scourge of opioid overdoses and deaths, a team of state 
and local law enforcement officials on Wednesday announced a 
partnership to investigate one cause of the epidemic: the doctors and 
pharmacists who illegally prescribe or dispense pain medications.

Attorney General Maura Healey said a task force led by her office, 
called the Interagency Group on Illegal Prescribing, will pair Drug 
Enforcement Administration and FBI agents with state and local 
police, public health officials, and analysts from the state auditor's office.

The goal is to identify doctors who have a questionable pattern of 
writing too many opioid prescriptions, or prescribe to too many 
people who are not from their area. The analysts would also look at 
pharmacists who routinely bill Medicare and Medicaid for those 
prescriptions, searching for fraudulent claims.

"We do know, unfortunately, there are some bad apples out there," 
Healey said at a press conference at her office. "I think the medical 
community is responsible, the pharmaceutical community is 
responsible, I think all of us in government . . . are responsible" 
for addressing the region's opioid epidemic.

Officials cited statistics demonstrating that prescription drug abuse 
can lead to addiction. Nationally, the number of opioid prescriptions 
jumped nearly 140 percent between the mid-1990s and 2013, from 87 
million to 207 million. In Massachusetts alone, more than 4.6 million 
prescriptions for painkillers were written in 2014. That is one 
prescription for nearly every adult in Massachusetts, state officials 
pointed out.

Meanwhile, four of every five new heroin addicts first abused 
prescription drugs, possibly given to them after a sporting injury or 
a car accident, according to DEA officials. Deaths from 
opioid-related overdoses more than doubled in Massachusetts between 
2011 and 2014; more than 1,250 people are believed to have died from 
overdoses in 2014.

Michael Ferguson, special agent in charge of the DEA in New England, 
said officials acknowledge that prescription painkillers serve a 
medical purpose, but they want to target doctors and pharmacists who 
willingly and knowingly prescribe and dispense medications to people 
who should not be receiving them, or who have been proven to abuse them.

Last month, Healey's office charged a Ludlow physician with illegally 
prescribing opioids for no legitimate medical purposes; some of those 
patients had documented substance abuse issues.

State officials also acknowledged the difficulty in proving that 
doctors abuse their discretion. In May 2015, a Needham doctor was 
acquitted of federal drug-dealing charges - after the first jury to 
hear the case was hung - even though authorities had argued that he 
recklessly prescribed medications to people he knew were abusing them.

The initiative could raise concerns in the medical community, which 
has sought to defend a doctor's discretion in deciding how to care 
for patients.

However, Dennis M. Dimitri, a medical doctor and president of the 
Massachusetts Medical Society, wrote in a statement Monday that his 
group supports the initiative to eliminate "inappropriate prescribing 
and opioid abuse and misuse."

"We know that the vast majority of physicians prescribe carefully and 
ethically," Dimitri wrote.

John McNeil, first assistant for the US attorney's office in Boston, 
said the task force can decide whether to bring state charges, 
federal charges, or have public health officials probe whether there 
are Medicaid abuses. Officials can also file civil complaints or seek 
fines or license revocations.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom