here in midland, mi there are increasing amounts of young people with drug addictions to prescription medication.
i used to work at the pharmacy in meijers here in midland and i have seen some strange things.
like one guy layed out over $2,000 cash in $20 bills for brand name oxycontin
he refused generic
patient privacy laws (HIPAA) prevent a pharmacy from releasing information without written consent from the patient.
however, being that medicaitons like xanax, darvocet, vicodin, and oxycontin are coming from pharmacies, shouldn't there be some kind of clause? like for example, the guy in the instance described above. we dispensed the medication anyways, because it is unethical to judge
ok... but sometimes the situation is obvious.
more importantly, since prescription drug abuse is growing at a fast rate all over the country, shouldn't pharmacies be held accountable for not reporting suspicious behavior to law enforcement?
it should be a team effort
and to what point does it infringe on a patient's right to privacy when it comes to health care?
another example: a MAPS (michigan automated prescription system) report shows how many controlled substances a patient has had filled, on what date, how many tablets, dr's instructions, what pharmacy, and which city. we had a patient whose report was 9 pages long for 1 month alone. she had gotten over 500 tablets of vicodin from 4 different drs and from 5 different pharmacies in 1 week (one of which was a refill, 4 were new rxs)
customer relations are important, and i believe that is often times why pharmacies will fill rxs even though the pharmacist and technicians find the circumstance to be "iffy" we did not however fill for her because in that case she is was very obviously selling and/or abusing the medication we called the dr and told them what we found and they cancelled the script
so with MAPS reports and pharmacy/dr communication, steps are being taken.
the point is, and what im gettin at here, is if it is still locked up in a pharmacy cabinet, its not on the streets for people to abuse. and if the pharmacy can see illegal activity, they should do their part, as law enforcement should do theirs, at least if pharmacies are reporting findings, the police know where to look.
