Topic: prescription medications

Nobody knows exactly how extensive off label prescribing is, but estimates range from a fifth of all prescriptions written in the US, to a third if we just look at psychiatric meds.

It’s not hard to see how the combination could result in retirees with serious, life threatening drug problems.

The increasing prevalence of polypharmacy is a concern due to the potential for adverse drug interactions but also because the use of multiple meds often results in a lower quality of life for the patient.

Besides, your insurance company probably loves them. It’s cheaper than extended psychotherapy.

We might have been making things more difficult for the patients we wanted to help. This is not unknown in healthcare.

No question that combining or ‘stacking’ these substances, illegal and/or prescription, increases the risk for unintended OD.

Is there a disparity between what you can observe and what the patient reports?

Big investors are… interested in buying low and selling high, in driving up the share price so they can turn around and place bets on how fast it will go down once the bad publicity hits.

The busier the doc, the easier to manipulate. And there’s continuing downward pressure from practice managers to see more patients in less time.

And now there’s the emergence of ‘tip sites’ on the Internet, dedicated to turning the reader into a better-prepared, more successful drug-seeker.