Online database would track painkiller prescriptions

Pain patients understand why California's attorney general says he needs to raise $3.5 million to stop addicts and drug dealers who use doctors to stockpile Vicodin and OxyContin.

Abuse of prescription medicine is rampant in part because chronic pain can put your head in a vise and reduce you to a lump of flesh unable to do anything but lie on a sofa, said Bob Ramos of Santa Paula, whose spine has been surgically fused. It can feel as if "someone was grabbing your ligaments and pulling them out of your back," said Terry Kierzek of Agoura Hills, who had a cyst on his spine.

Largely misunderstood and, according to some experts, neglected by the healthcare community, pain can drive dependence on prescription drugs. The medication is highly addictive, doesn't address the source of pain but clouds the sear and throb that, as Mary Schirm of Thousand Oaks put it, "will drive a person insane."

"Do I understand the need for medication? The need to stockpile? The need to gather drugs? Absolutely, 100 percent," said Schirm, who has massive headaches but fights the temptation to overmedicate.

Edmund G. Brown Jr., the former governor and presidential candidate who is now California's top cop, wants to implement an online database that would track prescriptions for addictive drugs. While a patient waited, pharmacies and doctors could check the database and make sure the person isn't doctor-shopping -- collecting a half-dozen prescriptions from different doctors for painkillers.

"The motive is to allow doctors not to unwittingly overprescribe, or if they illegally do it, we want to go after them," said Brown, who hopes to implement the system next year if partner groups can raise the money.

The magnitude of the problem is hard to diagnose, though state officials cite a 2007 report from the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud. It suggests insurance companies are billed nearly $73 billion a year for prescription drugs that are abused or resold.

Ventura County prosecutors filed charges Tuesday against Dr. Bernard Bass of North Hollywood for allegedly conspiring to provide patients with OxyContin and hydrocodone after surrendering his license to prescribe. Prosecutors say they're investigating the possibility of a connection between Bass' prescriptions and the deaths of six of his patients from Ventura County.

"It's a problem like any other drug is," said Ventura sheriff's narcotics Detective Victor Fazio. "We're looking at the abuse and the illicit use and resale of prescription drugs just the same as we look at cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana."

Fazio said he believes doctors are conned by as many as 10 percent of their pain patients into providing unneeded drugs. Because the doctors can't measure pain, they take patients at their word.

"Any good doctor is going to get duped a fair percentage of time," he said. "It's when they have a blind indifference to what's going on in their practice and they become known as a source of supply for drug dealers in the street, that's when we get involved."

Rep. Lois Capps, D-Calif. Says there is a societal misunderstanding of pain management. The registered nurse is co-sponsoring a pain care bill aimed at increasing research, community education and training of healthcare professionals.

People don't understand their pain can be treated by therapy and other procedures, Capps said. They stockpile drugs because they don't see any alternatives.

"Prescription drug fraud comes from a lack of good healthcare," she said.

The state's database already exists, made from mandatory prescription reports filed by doctors and pharmacies. But when doctors currently make requests for information, it can take three weeks to get a response, meaning the information is of little value.

An online system that provides instant access would give doctors and pharmacies more control, said Dr. Scott Fishman, a medical school professor at UC Davis and president of the American Pain Foundation. It would empower doctors to prescribe drugs without worrying about being duped.

The state's $15 billion deficit means the $3.5 million needed for the system will have to come from outside sources. That fundraising drive is being led by the Troy and Alana Pack Foundation, named for children killed by a driver who was using prescription medication that came from multiple doctors.

(Contact Tom Kisken of the Ventura County Star in California at XX(at)xxx.com.)