"The evidence does not support rationing buprenorphine to save money or ensure safety."
Attached you find a link http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/30/8/1425.abstract to a very interesting article from the recent edition of "Health Affairs" titled "The Evidence Doesn’t Justify Steps By State Medicaid Programs To Restrict Opioid Addiction Treatment With Buprenorphine" arguing that the evidence does not support rationing buprenorphine to save money or ensure safety.
ABSTRACT:
Many state Medicaid programs restrict access to buprenorphine, a prescription medication that relieves withdrawal symptoms for people addicted to heroin or other opiates. The reason is that officials fear that the drug is costlier or less safe than other therapies such as methadone. To find out if this is true, we compared spending, the use of services related to drug-use relapses, and mortality for 33,923 Massachusetts Medicaid beneficiaries receiving either buprenorphine, methadone, drug-free treatment, or no treatment during the period 2003–07. Buprenorphine appears to have significantly expanded access to treatment because the drug can be prescribed by a physician and taken at home compared with methadone, which by law must be administered at an approved clinic. Buprenorphine was associated with more relapse-related services but $1,330 lower mean annual spending than methadone when used for maintenance treatment. Mortality rates were similar for buprenorphine and methadone. By contrast, mortality rates were 75 percent higher among those receiving drug-free treatment, and more than twice as high among those receiving no treatment, compared to those receiving buprenorphine. The evidence does not support rationing buprenorphine to save money or ensure safety.
Monday, September 5, 2011
Saturday, September 3, 2011
PDMP goes online!
Attached a link http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/09/01/2385732/fla-prescription-data-base-goes.html to an article from today's Miami Herald titled " Fla. prescription database goes into operation" highlighting the fact that as of September 1st Florida's prescription drug tracking system finally was up and running. That means that dispensers and pharmacies must upload their prescription data for Schedule II to IV to the database. Rebecca Poston, the system's program director in the Department of Health said that "Everything is working wonderful, I have not heard of any glitches related to the dispensers registering or uploading information in the system."
The Department of Health will not begin registering doctors and pharmacists until Oct 1, nor will they be able to get information out of the database until Oct. 17. In my opinion the registration and training process should start now and be phased in either by region, or other criteria to be determined by the Department to allow for a smooth transition and to motivate doctors to use the system. Its not too late to do that but leaving it until October 1st is cutting it too short.
Yours
Bernd
The Department of Health will not begin registering doctors and pharmacists until Oct 1, nor will they be able to get information out of the database until Oct. 17. In my opinion the registration and training process should start now and be phased in either by region, or other criteria to be determined by the Department to allow for a smooth transition and to motivate doctors to use the system. Its not too late to do that but leaving it until October 1st is cutting it too short.
Yours
Bernd
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Pill Mills Under Pressure
Attached a link http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/01/us/01drugs.html to today's New York Times front page article titled "Florida Shutting ‘Pill Mill’ Clinics."
The article highlights the accomplishments made despite the initial resistance by the current administration in Tallahassee.:
As of July, Florida doctors are barred, with a few exceptions, from dispensing narcotics and addictive medicines in their offices or clinics. As a result, doctors’ purchases of Oxycodone, which reached 32.2 million doses in the first six months of 2010, fell by 97 percent in the same period this year.
One indication that law enforcement officials are choking the supply of prescription drugs sold illegally in Florida is that the price of Oxycodone on the streets here has nearly doubled from last year, to $15 per pill from $8.
On Commercial Boulevard, a major street in Broward County, the number of pain clinics has fallen in the past year from 29 to one.
The fallout from the tougher laws may include an increase in pharmacy robberies, a problem that has been worse in Florida than any other state since 2007 (there were 65 armed robberies of pharmacies here last year).
As of today any health care practitioner who has dispensed a Schedule II-IV controlled substance, as defined in section 893.03, F.S. (i.e., OxyContin®, Percocet®, Vicodin®, Klonopin®, Xanax®, and Valium®), is required to report dispensing information to the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program’s database within seven (7) days after dispensing, in accordance with section 893.055, F.S. This includes pharmacies licensed under chapter 465, F.S., and dispensing health care practitioners licensed under chapter 458, 459, 461, 462, or 466, F.S
Now we must push to start educate physicians on how to use the PDMP and to encourage accessing the database to identify "doctors shoppers."
I am optimistic that we can achieve our goals.
Yours
Bernd
The article highlights the accomplishments made despite the initial resistance by the current administration in Tallahassee.:
As of July, Florida doctors are barred, with a few exceptions, from dispensing narcotics and addictive medicines in their offices or clinics. As a result, doctors’ purchases of Oxycodone, which reached 32.2 million doses in the first six months of 2010, fell by 97 percent in the same period this year.
One indication that law enforcement officials are choking the supply of prescription drugs sold illegally in Florida is that the price of Oxycodone on the streets here has nearly doubled from last year, to $15 per pill from $8.
On Commercial Boulevard, a major street in Broward County, the number of pain clinics has fallen in the past year from 29 to one.
The fallout from the tougher laws may include an increase in pharmacy robberies, a problem that has been worse in Florida than any other state since 2007 (there were 65 armed robberies of pharmacies here last year).
As of today any health care practitioner who has dispensed a Schedule II-IV controlled substance, as defined in section 893.03, F.S. (i.e., OxyContin®, Percocet®, Vicodin®, Klonopin®, Xanax®, and Valium®), is required to report dispensing information to the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program’s database within seven (7) days after dispensing, in accordance with section 893.055, F.S. This includes pharmacies licensed under chapter 465, F.S., and dispensing health care practitioners licensed under chapter 458, 459, 461, 462, or 466, F.S
Now we must push to start educate physicians on how to use the PDMP and to encourage accessing the database to identify "doctors shoppers."
I am optimistic that we can achieve our goals.
Yours
Bernd
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