I fear the violence we saw at
the Las Vegas pain clinic on Thursday will be coming to Arizona soon. What
physicians are doing to thousands of pain patients is wrong and will cause more
pain and suffering, and I’m sure more suicides and violence will follow.
Physicians like Dr Benjamin
Venger are reducing patient’s medications based on fake news and without
medical justification leaving patients to turn to the street for illegal drugs,
or end the pain like the patient Thursday.
At my last visit May 26th
with my pain management physician Dr Benjamin Venger in Fort Mohave he tried to
reduce my medications again like he has to all his patients, again I told him
DEA didn't do it.
I told Dr Venger that I had
spoke to DEA in Washington D.C., and the agent said DEA does not tell
physicians what or how much medications to prescribe, and “that any change to a
patient medication must be based on medical necessity and not on policy”.
When I told Dr Venger that the
2016 CDC pain treatment guidelines were for primary care physicians, not pain
specialists, I was stunned by his answer. Dr Venger said “I know, but its gone
social now”.
I have no idea what a subject
“going social” has to do with the medical treatment of patients. When I told people
at DEA, the FDA, and the CDC that physicians were lowering patient doses
because of “social media” and not medical necessary many were speechless.
The
Director of the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control Dr Debra Houry said in her response that the CDC “believes patients deserve safe and effective pain management. The Guideline also helps providers and patients—together—assess the benefits
and risks of opioid use”
Dr Hourly went on to say “the recommendation to
taper or reduce dosage is only for when patient harm outweighs patient benefit
of opioid therapy”.
Reducing the dose of opioids
without regard for tolerance, dependence or medical necessity as individual
patient is NOT in line with the 2016 CDC pain guideline.
As the benefits of opioid
therapy outweigh the risks for many individual patients’ physicians must
document the medical necessity of any dose reductions or they need to face
disciplinary action when patients harm themselves or others because of lack of
pain control.
It’s
sad when someone abuses opioids and overdoses.
It’s
tragic when a pain patient must take their life for lack of proper pain management.
Jay
Fleming, Speaker
Dolan
Springs Arizona
Law
Enforcement Action Partnership
Advancing
Justice and Public Safety Solutions
LawEnforcementActionPartnership.org
No comments:
Post a Comment