Risk, Reward and Pain: Doctor Lessons from An Opioid Trial

Opioid medications continue to be in the news, as demonstrated by the recent nationwide state attorneys-general investigation.  This situation only demands more attention from physicians and other healthcare providers who may face significant criminal sanctions.

My law partner Brandon Essig recently wrote in Medical Economics:

Over the past three decades, opioids have become a standard and effective component of pain management for many practitioners. They are effectively and safely prescribed in every conceivable clinical environment—primary care facilities, hospitals, pain management clinics and even dentist offices. They are prescribed to treat chronic and intractable pain, such as advanced stage cancer pain or severe burns, but they are also prescribed to treat soft tissue injuries and even prophylactically for post-operative situations where the practitioner knows that the recovery typically, but not always, involves pain. 

However, the medical community in the United States, and indeed society as a whole, is also now facing the reality that the side effects of opioid medications can be devastating. When misused and abused, opioids can have the same ill effects on society as any other illicit drug—addiction, crime, overdose, massive public health costs and death. In other words, society is now grappling with the dual realities of opioid medication: 1 – its use as an effective pain management tool is proven and here to stay; and 2 – its dangers and risks are also proven and must be contained. 

Medical practitioners who prescribe opioid medications as part of their treatment of patients in pain are caught in the middle of this struggle. Unfortunately for them, one of the primary ways society has chosen to address the dangers and risks of opioids is through legal action—both civil and criminal—against the healthcare practitioners who prescribe them to their patients. Therefore, physicians and other practitioners who prescribe controlled substances are participating in what is perhaps the most high-risk practice of medicine today. 

Read the entire article here.  (The byline also bears my name, but all I did was review the draft with a see-through in hand).

The opioid issue is not going away.  As  Caleb Hawley notes, “we all got problems/we all got pain”: