Thursday, June 25, 2015

What Primary Care Docs Don't Know Can Hurt You

Caleb Alexander is an associate professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the co-director of school's Center for Drug Safety and Effectiveness.  He and some of his colleagues decided to ask 1,000 primary care physicians about their beliefs and attitudes about opioids.  The results are both unsurprising and unsettling:

First, the good news:

  • More than half of doctors recognize prescription drug abuse as a "big problem" in their community; 
  • 90% strongly supported requiring patients to get opioids from a single doctor and single pharmacy; 
  • Two-thirds supported the concept of physician-patient "pain contracts"; 
  • More than half supported the use of urine drug monitoring for chronic opioid patients.  

However, the survey also uncovered significant gaps in knowledge among primary care docs:
  • About one-third said they thought most prescription drug abuse occurs by means other than swallowing the pills.  (In fact, crushing/snorting/injecting/etc. happens with far less frequency than simple ingestion.  Multiple studies suggest ingestion accounts for anywhere from 64% to 97% of prescription drug abuse.) 
  • Almost 50% believe that abuse-deterrent pills are less addictive than the standard formulation. (In fact, there's absolutely no difference.)  
This last data point is scary.  To me, it shows the success that pharmaceutical companies are having in creating a "halo" of safety around new abuse-deterrent formulations.  There is no "halo" and there's still a great deal of harm that can occur with the use of these medications.  

The primary issue isn't the kind of abuse against which abuse-deterrent formulations can protect patients.  The primary issue is lack of medical necessity.  In most cases, it doesn't matter if the patient's opioid is abuse-deterrent or not.  If it's medically unnecessary, if it's leading to loss of function, if it's leading to dependence and addiction... it needs to go away.  The doctor will be better educated.  The patient will get better.  The cost of care will go down.  Everyone wins.  
Abuse deterrent technology is great, but if we focus on technology over medical necessity, we will have missed the mark and the crisis will continue. 

Michael 
On Twitter @PRIUM1



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