Regular renewals for highly addictive painkilling drugs for patients never seen: that's been the practice of some doctors at the San Francisco VA Medical Center, the VA's Inspector General says in a new report, according to the Center for Investigative Reporting.
The San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center. // Department of Veterans Affairs photo.
The story follows a September CIR report that found a 270 percent surge in prescriptions for the opiates hydrocodone, oxycodone, methadone and morphine between 2001 and 2012. "That far outpaced the increase in patients and contributed to a fatal overdose rate among VA patients that the agency’s own researchers put at nearly double the national average," CIR wrote.
This latest story raises concerns about just how widespread is the practice of renewing prescriptions such powerful drugs without seeing patients - and, together with CIR's September report, the practice of over-prescribing them, period.
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