Who’d a thought that drug dealing was so lucrative?
There's a certain irony on how the U.S. has spent billions on the war on drugs, yet they still have a gigantic drug dealing problem, right under their nose.
Health-records software pushed opioids to doctors in secret deal with drugmaker
101–110 of 269 posts
Re: Health-records software pushed opioids to doctors in secret deal with drugmaker
#102As a non-American I'm also curious about the mass necessity of opioid painkillers to begin with. From what I hear, people are prescribed opioids post surgery etc. which is bonkers to me as a foreigner. I'm a middle aged person and I have never seen anyone using opioid painkillers anywhere in my life. They give stuff to you when you are having surgery, and when you are in hospital's care, but something very extraordin…
In 2007 an oral surgeon gave me a prescription for opioid painkillers after a wisdom tooth extraction, just in case I needed it for pain. The pain wasn't very bad and I never filled the prescription, but in retrospect giving me that prescription in the first place was just crazy!
Another doctor gave my wife an opioid painkiller prescription upon hospital discharge after a normal childbirth, just in case she needed it. Also never filled or used.
In the past few years doctors and pharmacists have become more aware of the risks and now write fewer opioid prescriptions. But for a while it was totally out of control. (I don't think either doctor was using Practice Fusion.)
Re: Health-records software pushed opioids to doctors in secret deal with drugmaker
#103Re: Health-records software pushed opioids to doctors in secret deal with drugmaker
#104As a non-American I'm also curious about the mass necessity of opioid painkillers to begin with. From what I hear, people are prescribed opioids post surgery etc. which is bonkers to me as a foreigner. I'm a middle aged person and I have never seen anyone using opioid painkillers anywhere in my life. They give stuff to you when you are having surgery, and when you are in hospital's care, but something very extraordin…
>As a non-American I'm also curious about the mass necessity of opioid painkillers to begin with.
The necessity is a result of big pharma lobbying activity, there is generally no medical necessity for opioids.
Big pharma money ensures things like marijuana remain a class 1 narcotic at the federal level meaning there is no known medical uses of the "drug." This allows pharma regulatory capture for their opiates which makes doctors, pharma, pharmacies and insurance money, so it simply becomes the norm to prescribe patients these highly addictive and euphoria inducing painkillers. So long as the patient remains insured, can pay and claims they are in pain, the Doctor will give them their drugs.
One astonishing fact is nearly 90 of the top 100 opioid prescribing doctors are in Florida, and 85% of all oxycodone a highly addictive variety of opioid therapy is prescribed in Florida.
Re: Health-records software pushed opioids to doctors in secret deal with drugmaker
#105[when opening a patients records] a pop-up would appear, asking about a patient’s level of pain. Then, a drop-down menu would list treatments ranging from a referral to a pain specialist to a prescription for an opioid painkiller. Click a button, and the program would create a treatment plan. From 2016 to spring 2019, the alert went off about 230 million times. The tool existed thanks to a secret deal. Its maker, a s…
People are going to go to prison for this, right? Or has all white crime been made legal in America? Because I can't tell anymore.
Nope. As far as I can tell, the company was fined. That's it.
Re: Health-records software pushed opioids to doctors in secret deal with drugmaker
#106[when opening a patients records] a pop-up would appear, asking about a patient’s level of pain. Then, a drop-down menu would list treatments ranging from a referral to a pain specialist to a prescription for an opioid painkiller. Click a button, and the program would create a treatment plan. From 2016 to spring 2019, the alert went off about 230 million times. The tool existed thanks to a secret deal. Its maker, a s…
I see people here who don't seem to get why this is unethical. So let's be crystal clear. Doctors are simply opening a patient's record, for whatever reason. This patient may not even be sick or need any medication. The doctor has to deal with a pop-up, and if they interact with it, they get presented with various options. Both options mentioned in the news report are likely to increase opioid addiction. The problem…
>The very existence of the pop-up is the problem.
Ethically yes, but legally, the issue may be more related to the payment, which I am guessing is a violation of the anti-kickback statute.
Re: Health-records software pushed opioids to doctors in secret deal with drugmaker
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
The products I work on, I know which customers are asking for which features. I also hear from the managers and BAs why features are requested. It's not a stretch to assume the developers in question knew what they were adding and who for. And at the very least they could intuit why. What's really hard to imagine is developers implementing features without understanding what they're implementing. Not saying they alon…
So the BAs and managers know too, and a typical assumption is that they know before they ever talk to a developer. They have every opportunity to reject it themselves on ethical grounds before they ever talk to a developer. And yet, they still bring this known-ethically-bad feature to the developer and ask them to implement it! If devs are talking and developing customer needs directly (a legitimate thing), then that…
> Devs should not be the ethical enforcement.
Yes, they should. If nobody else does, they're the last in line and they should remain ethical.
"Nobody else stopped the feature" is NOT AN EXCUSE.
Re: Health-records software pushed opioids to doctors in secret deal with drugmaker
#108[when opening a patients records] a pop-up would appear, asking about a patient’s level of pain. Then, a drop-down menu would list treatments ranging from a referral to a pain specialist to a prescription for an opioid painkiller. Click a button, and the program would create a treatment plan. From 2016 to spring 2019, the alert went off about 230 million times. The tool existed thanks to a secret deal. Its maker, a s…
[deleted]
Re: Health-records software pushed opioids to doctors in secret deal with drugmaker
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's very du joure to talk bad about Epic (and certainly not without reason re: HHS healthcare interoperability proposed rules) but they have been a huge success from a business perspective. The reason why they provide EHR support for the majority of large healthcare system hospitals is that they provide a lot of flexibility to implimentation. If you want the ability to support some very unique functionality, they wi…
They're in a very different market from Practice Fusion though. There aren't many small/independent practices rolling out Epic deployments...
Small independent practices are a dying market anyway. Provider organizations are all consolidating in order to achieve economies of scale (especially for EHRs), provide comprehensive services to patients under one roof, and achieve greater pricing power when negotiating with payers. Plus most physicians prefer being employees; they just want to practice medicine without the additional administrative hassle of running a small business.
Re: Health-records software pushed opioids to doctors in secret deal with drugmaker
#110[when opening a patients records] a pop-up would appear, asking about a patient’s level of pain. Then, a drop-down menu would list treatments ranging from a referral to a pain specialist to a prescription for an opioid painkiller. Click a button, and the program would create a treatment plan. From 2016 to spring 2019, the alert went off about 230 million times. The tool existed thanks to a secret deal. Its maker, a s…
This qualifies for /r/assholedesign
/r/dangerousdesign