See if you can reconcile the following two sets of data points from a survey published by the Journal of the American Medical Association last week regarding physician perceptions of prescription drug abuse:
1) 90% of doctors report prescription drug abuse is a moderate to large problem in their communities and 85% think prescription drugs are overused in clinical practice.
2) 88% of those same doctors are confident in their skills related to prescribing painkillers and almost half of them are comfortable using the drugs for chronic, non-cancer pain.
And there's the rub. Call this the old "there's a problem, but I'm not contributing to it" phenomenon. Doctors who profess confidence and comfort prescribing prescription painkillers for chronic, non-cancer pain may be contributing the problem of misuse and abuse, albeit unwittingly. The study doesn't offer any insights into dosage levels or medication classes or individual drugs, so one cannot draw conclusions. And I'm certainly not suggesting that painkillers can't be used appropriately for time limited, function-focused management of chronic, non-cancer pain. But the contrast between the data points struck me. 85% think the drugs are overused... 50% are confident using them with a group of patients for which there's little to no evidence of long term efficacy.
And this is a commonly observed phenomenon. Rewind the clock five, six, seven years and a material number of work comp payers (from carriers to TPAs to self-insured employers) were saying the same thing. "There's a problem, but I'm not contributing to it." I personally heard it at least a dozen times in my first year here at PRIUM (which was five years ago... time flies). I don't hear it much these days. As an industry, we're beginning to make concerted, strategic effort to combat prescription drug misuse and abuse and we largely recognize that all payers have a role to play. While there's still A LOT of work to be done, we've passed through the first step on the road to recovery: payers are not only admitting they have a problem, they're recognizing their past contributions to that problem.
The physician community appears to have the first half down - they're clear we have a problem. I wonder if they recognize their past and current contributions to the problem. I know many physicians do. I hope more come to recognize the need to change patterns of practice in light of the largest man made epidemic in history.
Michael
On Twitter @PRIUM1
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