While there are many factors that have contributed to the opioid crisis, prescription medications are leading the way in fueling the crisis. Unfortunately, these medications often come from medical professionals who negligently and unethically prescribe narcotics to patients.
While there is nothing unethical or negligent about prescribing opioid medications to help patients manage pain, doctors and medical professionals do have a legal duty to ensure that their treatment of a patient and their prescription practices are performed in accordance to the acceptable standard of care.
This means careful evaluations of a patient’s health and how prescribed narcotics may harm or benefit them. In some cases, the failure to weigh the benefits of pain treatment with the risk of addiction can rise to the level of medical malpractice.
San Diego Personal Injury Attorney has dedicated over 35 years to advocating for the injured and the wronged, and to holding negligent individuals and medical professionals accountable for causing preventable injuries, damages, and death.
With extensive experience handling medical malpractice cases, Mr. Vaage has the insight to effectively protect the rights of clients who suffer damages at the hands of doctors and health care providers who provide substandard care.
This includes handling medical malpractice claims based on negligent prescription.
In our firm’s latest monthly newsletter – which you can view here – we focus on how negligent prescription of narcotics is fueling the opioid crisis in America.
This is a crisis that has claimed more lives as the result of drug overdoses in 2014 than in any year on record, and continues to kill roughly 91 Americans every day.
With such alarming data, it is clear that the opioid problem is one that has many contributing factors and many potential solutions. At the forefront of these contributing factors is the prescription of opioid medications, such as Percocet, Vicodin, and OxyContin, among others. These medications, while effective for controlling pain, are exceptionally physically and psychologically addictive.
They often cause patients who may have once needed them for a valid reason to continue their use despite no longer having a medical need. This can result in obtaining medications, or even opioid street drugs such as heroin, through doctor shopping, unscrupulous pill mills, or even illegal means.
The rise in prescription painkillers is directly correlated to the rise in opioid addiction and overdoses. Since 1999, the amount of prescription opioid medications sold in the United States nearly quadrupled, despite the fact that there has not been an increase in the amount of pain reported by Americans.
In 2013, health care providers issued close to a quarter of a billion prescriptions for these powerful and highly addictive narcotics. That’s enough to supply every American adult with their own bottle of pills.
In our newsletter, we discuss efforts being taken to combat opioid prescription abuse, including increased regulation and a focus on enforcement of overprescribing. We also discuss the role medical professionals play in the epidemic, and their legal duty to treat patients under the accepted standard of care.
This includes their obligation to identify drug-seeking behavior and refrain from prescribing narcotics. When they fail to do so, victims may have grounds for a medical malpractice lawsuit. Families of a patient who died from an opioid overdose may also have the ability to pursue a wrongful death lawsuit.
Proving negligent prescription medical malpractice cases is not easy, but it can be effectively done with the help of a proven attorney who understands the issues involved and the legal elements that must be satisfied in order to illustrate that a physician breached their duty of care.
If you have questions about negligent prescription and medical malpractice, our firm is readily available to help and review your case. Contact us today for a FREE consultation.
Comments
Post a Comment