New Rule Against Lax Prescribing Could Hurt Pain Patients

The New Year does not seem to be promising for pain management patients as Washington legislators passed a new law regarding prescriptions for pain patients.

Over the last several months, there have been reports that there’s a drastic increase in deaths related to prescription-drug overdose. And to put mitigate this, they have put out an order to a number of hospitals and doctors to stop taking in new patients and prescribing them with opiates. In some cases, current prescriptions are being suspended or cut off.

In the late 1980’s, it is said that the lax prescribing of opiates and pain medications. Before this time, studies have suggested that pain patients are not addressed properly and they are not given the right medications for their condition. However, afterwards, doctors have been liberal on prescribing pain medications and as opiates are increasingly prescribed, this could be the reason for the rising number of deaths.

Denis Murphy, 72 and suffering from a nerve disorder which he described to be as painful as “a blowtorch to my testicles”, fears that this new law would leave patients like him hurting. Pain medications are the only relief he has from the excruciating condition. He even has to change doctors because the previous one thinks he is not in pain at all.

Most chronic-pain patients are now concerned on how this new law would affect them. It is not going to take effect until 1 Jan 2013 but already some hospitals have turned down new patients. Pain patients can be demanding and this new rule would likely become an excuse for doctors not to see them, as speculated by the Washington State Medical Association and the Washington Academy of Family Physicians.

The board only wants to stop the death toll from rising, having seen the trend on drug overdose deaths. There are also a lot of factors to consider before prescribing a pill to a patient claiming to have chronic pain. This new law probably wants to remind doctors that overtreatment of chronic pain only leads to death and not cure according to Hootan Melamed, a pharmacist.  

The federal Institute of Medicine reports that there are 116M Americans suffering from chronic pain. However, the graphs and testimony that Dr. Alex Cahana, head of the UW's Division of Pain Medicine offered shows how many of these patients are probably addicted or dying from lax prescription.

Patients are in fear of having their prescriptions cut off while doctors are in not unanimously decided on this new pain management law.