A Pained Life: Stop Terrorizing Doctors
/By Carol Levy, PNN Columnist
When I visit chronic pain support groups online, it is almost astounding how often posters turn to talking about the “opioid crisis,” no matter the subject of the initial post. One person wrote that she lives in a town where there is not one doctor who will prescribe opioids, no matter what the diagnosis.
I see comments like, “My doctor won't prescribe them for me anymore even though they were helping,” or “My doctor reduced what I was taking without any effort to ask how I was doing.”
Often they’ll add, “My doctor said he has changed his prescribing practices because of the CDC guidelines.”
Human Rights Watch recommended last year that the CDC guideline be revised because too many doctors were using it as an excuse to abruptly cutoff or taper patients.
“Even when medical providers understood that the Guideline was voluntary, they believed they risked punishment or unwanted attention from law enforcement agencies or state medical boards if they maintained patients at high doses,” Human Rights Watch found.
How does this fear, engendered by political institutions like the CDC and DEA, not fall under the definition of terrorism? This is how Miriam-Webster defines terrorism:
“The unlawful use or threat of violence especially against the state or the public as a politically motivated means of attack or coercion.”
Granted, the guidelines are not unlawful, but they have had the exact effect of being coercive on many in the medical community. I would also contend that the threat of being arrested and going to prison is a threat of violence.
The guidelines were engendered by the public outcry and governmental concern over the level of opioid overdoses and deaths. The CDC said the guidelines are voluntary, but to many doctors, pharmacies and insurance companies they are enshrined in stone as commandments. They were promulgated as a political response. They were not based on the medical model or the realities of patients in pain.
The point of terrorism is to instill fear. Terrorize one and others will fall in line. The guidelines have had exactly that effect. Accuse one doctor of overprescribing or running a pill mill – even if no charges are actually filed -- and other doctors will change their practices by reducing or refusing to prescribe opioids out of fear of being falsely accused, even when they know doing so will hurt their patients.
And how are patients hurt? Attorney Mark Rothstein, Director of the Institute for Bioethics at the University of Louisville School of Medicine, answers that question.
“Many physicians who previously prescribed opioids now have reduced or discontinued such prescriptions, even for established patients with chronic pain. In some cases, the change in policy was adopted literally overnight,” Rothstein wrote in the American Journal of Public Health.
“With no alternatives for pain control... and the physical and mental pressure of unremitting pain, many patients turned to illicit drugs, especially heroin. The result has been greater addiction, more deaths from overdoses, and an increase in cases of HIV/AIDS and hepatitis from contaminated syringes.”
It is long past time to end what has been interpreted as policy, a policy that hurts patients and the community. It’s time for the terrorism to stop.
Carol Jay Levy has lived with trigeminal neuralgia, a chronic facial pain disorder, for over 30 years. She is the author of “A Pained Life, A Chronic Pain Journey.” Carol is the moderator of the Facebook support group “Women in Pain Awareness.” Her blog “The Pained Life” can be found here.
The information in this column should not be considered as professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. It is for informational purposes only and represent the author’s opinions alone. It does not inherently express or reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of Pain News Network.
