Board of Pharmacy alerting regulatory boards of drug problems

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Doctors who prescribe medicine are being urged to pay closer attention to the patients getting those prescriptions. A group affiliated with the state Board of Pharmacy is looking for red flags among doctors who show potential problems.

Letters were recently issued to a number of doctors, pharmacists, and others across the state about the two problems. One of the letters identified doctors who had an abnormally high number of patients who died as a result of prescription drug overdoses or other problems associated with medication.

“One of them in six months had six and another in three months had four,” said Mike Goff, Administrator of the Board of Pharmacy Controlled Substance Monitoring Program. “Those are the worst of the worst. They definitely need looked at. There are others who had two, three, or four who passed away potentially due to prescribing practices.”

Although Goff’s organization can flag a doctor for review, they cannot take action on their own.

“We’re not an investigative group,” he said. “We’re just going to refer them to somebody to look at it further. We thought there was a reasonable need for someone else to look at them.”

The second letter is to advise doctors some of their patients might be doctor shopping and they were being used in the chain. Goff says there is a database in place for doctors to check on that, but not everybody is using it.

“One patient in particular saw 34 doctors in a 12 month period and got prescriptions from each of those doctors,” he said. “We send letters to each of those doctors to tell them they wrote one of those prescriptions and it exceeds the parameters set by the advisory committee and they need to at least look at the monitoring program.”

The monitoring program is a data base of every prescription written in West Virginia. It includes the patient’s name, the doctor who prescribed it, and the pharmacy which dispensed it. State Code requires all doctors to have access to the database, but only in a few narrow circumstances are they actually required to use it. Goff says if they would, it might cut down on a lot of problems.

“It’s shown that physicians who use this regularly, in other states, the problems seem to be declining,” he said.





More News

News
As Yeager Airport's Wildlife Patrol Dog turns 7, a new dog comes in to learn from him
The new Border Collie is getting acclimated and receiving training for his soon-to-be role.
March 28, 2024 - 6:30 pm
News
Dunlow Volunteer Fire Department closes
The Dunlow VFD did not have a valid workers compensation insurance policy.
March 28, 2024 - 6:20 pm
News
PEIA examines financial effects of new law meant to ensure local pharmacies get fair reimbursements
Gov. Jim Justice signed Senate Bill 453 into law this week.
March 28, 2024 - 4:11 pm
News
Barbour County woman sentenced after death case sent back to circuit court by Supreme Court
Carli Reed sentenced on voluntary manslaughter conviction.
March 28, 2024 - 4:11 pm


Your Comments