Posted on 01/11/2013 2:25:04 AM PST by Biggirl
Some of the most common and most powerful prescription painkillers on the market will be restricted sharply in the emergency rooms at New York City’s 11 public hospitals, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said Thursday in an effort to crack down on what he called a citywide and national epidemic of prescription drug abuse.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The abuse of Vicodin or OxyContin or Percocet is legendary. No one in the medical industry cares...most political folks don’t care....and public doesn’t care. As for Bloomberg’s effort? Well...folks will just go and make reservations every three days to get their prescription...so doctors will make another ten to twenty percent on profit per year.
Tinhorn f***ing dictator. Better they should writhe in pain, right? Bloomberg, you are Obama/Mao writ small.
What is left for this guy to restrict? I guess the percentage of alcohol in beer is his next target.
A doctor should be able to decide what is best for his patient and if that be morhpine or oxcycodone, or even fentanyl then so be it. If anything the hosptials need to have narcotic review boards and punish doctors who overprescribe or overoder medication.
I am so sick of this know-it-all petty Dictator, perhaps he can take Hugo's place, lets give him a Country, and give us back NY.
I am surprised New Yawk is far behind the times. Hospitals on the Mississippi Coast imposed similar restrictions to drug seekers in the early 1990s. They (the six larger hospitals) maintain and share a database of known drug seekers.
ER physicians are NOT primary care doctors and should prescribe only meds to treat acute ailments.
This is a common sense move for Bloomberg to make. This is the first thing he's done I can agree with.
I can’t disagree with him on this action either, especially since we all have health insurance now. Ok just a little sarcasm there....
But truly, if they are writing a 7-10 script for pain meds that is way too much to be walking out the ER door with. If one is still in that much pain post 3 days, one needs to be seen by a regular doctor for further treatment or should be admitted for further diagnostic care.
Bloomie will never sit in an ER waiting area for 3 hours waiting for Xrays, with multiple fractures, and without powerful pain relief, as did my spouse 3 weeks ago
A proclamation like this is bound to result in serious trouble...legal trouble,particularly...for the hospitals involved.
Tell that to the millions of people who see the ER as a walk in clinic that *never* closes and that *must* see you and who get most,if not all,of their health care there.I saw exactly that over a 20 year career in hospital ER's.
Sorry your spouse had such a bad experience - hope things are improving. Unfortunately, once Obunglercare is fully implemented, a 3 hour wait will sound like paradise.
I guess it all depends on how the restrictions are enacted. Since faking a medical crisis and going to the ER is a common way for addicts to get their fixes, a policy that manages to address that while still giving appropriate care to actual patients is a good measure to take.
However, I have no idea how Bloomberg plans to implement this, and he has a history of being a petty dictator. So, for all I know, this could turn out to be a burden for the hospitals and end up harming patients.
As an aside, I went to the ER for chest pains (I still don’t know the cause). The first thing I told the staff was “No narcotics!”
——— Bloomberg, you are Obama/Mao writ small. ———
I would argue he sees himself as Obama Redux.
His efforts are but prelude to those of President Bloomberg
I have noticed the big signs in spanish at the local ER that pretty much says all are welcome, payment optional.
Many would gladly give him New York and everything north and east if they would split off and leave the real America alone.
Rather than New England, they can be called New Europe
They can still be Yankees an thought of with utter disdain
Not likely. Obama ain't leaving.
Seriously.
I agree to some extent but then I wonder if an ER doc proscribes you only a few day supply of an opiate pain killer and then you go to your primary care doctor a few days later and he writes you another partial or full scrip for the same pain killer, that you won’t end up in some data base as a “doctor shopper”.
And I would add it may not always be necessary to follow up with a primary care doctor after a visit to the ER for some types of injury if it doesn’t require follow up or further treatment and it can sometimes take a week or more to be seen by a lot of primary care docs and even more by some specialists.
Back in around 2003, I a relative took me to the ER one evening because my back pain and back muscle spasms were so bad that I couldn’t stand up straight without severe pain – I initially didn’t want to go BTW, but she convinced me. The ER doc did an examination, asked a lot of questions and determined I had a “slipped disc” and a pinched nerve and the pain was causing the muscle spasms which in turn were exasperating the inflammation. He sent me home with an Rx for muscle relaxers (1 every 4 hours), Percocet (1 every 6 hours), enough for about 7 days and a steroid for the inflammation and at the ER gave me a shot of an anti-inflammatory drug. Boy those drugs knocked me out but they also worked. I ended up not taking all the muscle relaxers and Percocet, only took them for about 4 days and I did follow up with an orthopedic (I had to wait two weeks to be seen BTW). By the time I saw him I wasn’t in eructating pain anymore and didn’t need pain meds but he did write a new Rx for the muscle relaxers with instructions on when and how to take them and only if necessary and wrote a script for what he called “Back School”, i.e. physical therapy. If the ER doc had only wrote a script for a day or two worth of pain meds, considering how long it took to be seen by the ortho, I might have likely ended up back at the ER, missed more than 4 days of work and would have suffered needlessly. Just saying.
Think Caligula
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