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Milwaukee database aims to prevent prescription painkiller abuse

EHR Connection, March 31, 2008

The Medical Society of Milwaukee County is spearheading an effort to establish a database that will allow physicians to check whether their patients have received prescriptions for potentially addictive painkillers from another source, according to an article in the March 1 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

"For your own safety and for patient safety, we need a way of checking to see where these patients are getting drugs," John Whitcomb, MD, medical director of patient access at Aurora Sinai Medical Center in Milwaukee, told the newspaper. "Patients can take these prescriptions and sell them on the street, and we have no way of tracking who's doing it."

The newspaper reported recently that local physicians almost never face criminal prosecution for incorrectly prescribing potentially dangerous drugs and that several physicians have retained their licenses despite repeated investigations by Wisconsin's Medical Examining Board.

Whitcomb told the newspaper that as an emergency room physician he prescribed painkillers and worried that his patients might obtain more pills from another hospital or clinic and then abuse or sell them.

Participation in the database will be voluntary for Milwaukee County physicians, but the society plans to seek legislation that would mandate a statewide system, the newspaper reported.

Click here to read the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article.

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