DEA Getting It Right

I'm glad to see DEA is changing the way they do investigations into the diversion of pain medications. DEA has always focused on physicians who treat pain patients, and many times physicians were blamed for the actions of their patients. 

Here in Arizona DEA has a tip line to report People who are selling or abusing their medications. You can text a tip to TIP411, or go to www.DEA.gov This is something new for DEA, and a step in the right direction. Hopefully this will be used to identify patients who have problems.

Some will be abusing, or selling their medications, but others others will be legitimate patients who are under medicated. The majority of patients are grateful for the pain relief they receive, a few create the problems for others.

There are bad physicians out there, but most physicians try to follow the law. If a physician does their best to detect patients who may abuse their medications, do a good medical history, do needed tests to identify and document the cause of the patients pain, and treat the side effects of opioids, then don't arrest them, educate them. 

Patients should try alternative methods and physicians need to document these attempts of pain relief before turning to opioids. In my case I tried every antiinflamatory, antidepressant, and anything else they could think of, I tried physical therapy, a 30 day pain clinic, and finally surgery. 

So with millions of Americans suffering chronic pain, we need to do something different, I wish I knew what it was.