Military Times by Patricia Kime 1/14/2020
U.S. military hospitals overprescribed opioids to patients with chronic pain from 2015 and 2017, a dangerous practice that put them at risk for addiction and overdose, according to the Department of Defense Inspector General’s Office.
At three military medical facilities, some non-cancer patients were prescribed pills at more than five times the level recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In just one year, one patient in Alaska received 2,450 oxycodone tablets, while another was prescribed 4,700 over the course of two years.
Despite an opioid crisis that began more than a decade earlier, the Defense Department did not have policies or procedures in place to track patient prescriptions until 2017. That year, the Defense and Veterans Affairs departments issued joint clinical practice guidelines for physicians to consider when prescribing opioids and DoD implemented new systems for monitoring prescriptions.
More:
https://www.militarytimes.com/pay-benefits/2020/01/14/audit-finds-some-military-hospitals-issued-potentially-dangerous-amounts-of-opioids/
