“The vast majority of people who overdose on their prescribed pain killers continue to receive them from their doctors, according to a recent study out of Boston Medical Center.
The study, led by Dr. Marc LaRochelle, was the first of its kind to review medical claims for patterns of prescribing after someone had a non-fatal drug overdose. LaRochelle found 91 percent of the time, patients continued to be prescribed opioids, such as oxycontin, after their overdose.
Of those patients, 70 percent continued receiving opioid prescriptions from the same doctor they did before overdosing.
“While the nonfatal opioid overdoses in this study were treated and recorded in a patient’s medical record, it is unclear if the physician who prescribed the medication was notified when their patient experienced an overdose event,” LaRochelle said in a news release.”
Source: Telegraph Forum – January 15, 2016
