Urine Testing: The Next Shoe to Drop?

Opioids have been a topic of discussion for months now, and every week it seems as though a new company or individual is in hot water over opioid prescribing practices, or over alleged opioid prescribing practices. One facet of the opioid epidemic that has not been touched upon is the requirement many pain management physicians and others have that when a patient is under their care and receiving opioids and/or habit-forming prescriptions, the patient must affirm that they are not seeing other physicians for prescriptions and/or that all prescriptions are being filled at the same pharmacy. To that end, the patient typically must be willing to submit to random drug testing. Recently, Bloomberg News published an article attempting to highlight the physicians who are "getting rich" off of this aspect of opioids. The article begins by focusing on one such group, Comprehensive Pain Specialists in Tennessee. The article notes that the doctor-owned network of 54 clinics is the largest pain-treatment practice in the Southeast. Medicare paid the company at least $11 million for urine and related tests in 2014, when five of its professionals stood among the nation’s top billers. One nurse practitioner at the company’s clinic in Cleveland, Tennessee, single-handedly generated $1.1 million in Medicare billings for urine tests that year, according to Medicare records. Kaiser Health News, with assistance from researchers at the Mayo Clinic, analyzed available billing data from Medic...
Source: Policy and Medicine - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs