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posted by martyb on Monday September 25 2017, @12:59PM   Printer-friendly
from the addiction-sucks dept.

CVS is finally trying to do something about the opioid epidemic:

Drug-store chain CVS Health announced Thursday that it will limit opioid prescriptions in an effort to combat the epidemic that accounted for 64,000 overdose deaths last year alone.

Amid pressure on pharmacists, doctors, insurers and drug companies to take action, CVS also said it would boost funding for addiction programs, counseling and safe disposal of opioids.

[...] The company's prescription drug management division, CVS Caremark, which provides medications to nearly 90 million people, said it would use its sweeping influence to limit initial opioid prescriptions to seven-day supplies for new patients facing acute ailments.

It will instruct pharmacists to contact doctors when they encounter prescriptions that appear to offer more medication than would be deemed necessary for a patient's recovery. The doctor would be asked to revise it. Pharmacists already reach out to physicians for other reasons, such as when they prescribe medications that aren't covered by a patient's insurance plan.

The plan also involves capping daily dosages and initially requiring patients to get versions of the medications that dispense pain relief for a short period instead of a longer duration.

[...] "The whole effort here is to try to reduce the number of people who are going to end up with some sort of opioid addiction problem," CVS Chief Medical Officer Troyen Brennan said in an interview.

It appears this initiative is limited to initial filling of prescriptions — there is no mention of changes in the handling of refills.


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  • (Score: 2) by Mykl on Tuesday September 26 2017, @01:35AM (1 child)

    by Mykl (1112) on Tuesday September 26 2017, @01:35AM (#572872)

    You're assuming that Thexalon's friends were still in pain when they finished their opioid prescriptions. Nothing he said suggests that's the case. More likely (and here's where I make assumptions!) they were simply hooked on an addictive drug.

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  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday September 26 2017, @04:23PM

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday September 26 2017, @04:23PM (#573219) Journal

    Actually, I wasn't talking about any particular case. Rather I was talking about characteristics of the opioids. I don't know his friends, and that is irrelevant to my point.

    Well, not totally irrelevant. Opioids *are* addictive, and addicts tend, by definition, to strive hard to acquire the drug to which they are addicted. OTOH, I knew a person in college who said that tobacco was a harder drug for him to kick than heroin, and this was later echoed by Synanon. My suspicion is that it varies from individual to individual, but that part of the reason tobacco is so hard to kick is its wide availability. (That's not the only reason. Commercial cigarettes have a secondary addictive substance mixed into the paper. The way I succeeded in quitting the second time was by switching to an organic cigarette [Shermans], and then gradually increasing the time between cigarettes. [The first time was easy. I just quit immediately. That didn't work the second time.])

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