Methadone Uses

Question by Shelly: Does anyone know who I would send a petition to regarding pain clinics?
I am starting a petition to ban pain clinic doctors from prescribing deadly combinations of medication such as methadone and oxyconton or methadone and xanax. These so called patients go in, pay a fee, get their scrips and are on there way. Then they sell them to people to make money for their next visit. So many people are dying from these combinations. How many names would I need to get and where would I send it to?

Best answer:

Answer by pobrecita
No, but I would recommend spelling the medications correctly on the petition. It is oxycontin.

Answer by US_DR_JD
First, before you start the petition, you should have some research into the subject. You state that methadone and alprazolam (Xanax) are a deadly combination, yet these are only considered to be potential for interation with possible increased CNS depression. Secondly, it is extremely rare for any patient to be placed on two sustained release opioid medications such as Oxycontin and methadone. Most patients when given a combination of opiates are given a sustained release opioid for chronic pain conditions and an immediate release formulation if needed for break through pain control.

By and large, patients seen in pain management clinics do not “go in, pay a fee, get their scrips” as you suggest. While there are in all fields people who work outside the accepted standards, and there are certainly physicians who indiscriminately prescribe medications, this is not common to all pain management clinics. If, by stopping physicians from providing pain management, you desire to, stop giving pain relief to cancer patients, and those with debilitating spinal injuries, as well as the patients with many other chronic pain syndromes, then you should find a way to explain this to the millions of patients.

Proper pain management clinics place their patients on narcotic contracts, perform random urinalysis (to insure the patients are taking the medications prescribed, and no additional medications). There is also an effort made to check with the pharmacies to determine if certain patients have been receiving precriptions from multiple prescribers. At my clinic, the patients contract to take their prescriptions to only one pharmacy, it makes tracking of the controlled substance prescriptions easier. Additionally, any patients who take any additional narcotics, or use their narcotics other than on the prescribed schedule, are released from the clinic as a patient. While, we at pain clinics are not in law enforcement and do not have the ability or the authority to investigate suspicion of diversion of narcotics. If there is any suspicion or report, the involved patients are summoned for an immediate urnialysis, and if they are shown to not have the appropriate narcotics in their urine, they are released from the clinic. It is not the job of physicians to prosecute, and it is against the HIPPA laws for us to release the information, thus we cannot send the names out. But we can release the patients, and it usually becomes very difficult for those patients to get into a clinic again. We also do not refill early for narcotics “lost” or “dropped into the toilet” or (my particular favorite) “the dog ate them.” Patients who “lose” thier medications twice are released from care.

Most pain management clinics make a very strong effort to ensure the protocols are followed, for the protection of the patient, the clinic, and the other patients at the clinic.

Finally, it is always the effort to manage everyone’s pain with the minimum amount of medication possible, utilizing all other adjunct medications and other forms of therapy available.

It is very simple, it is poor practice to give medications with bad interactions, and it is poor practice to provide medications without proper precautions. But a well managed pain clinic, is a neccessary part of the health care milieu, and many patients would have a significantly worse standard of living if they were not allowed some relief from chronic debilitating pain.

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