One-Third of Medicare Patients Prescribed Painkillers from more than one Doctor

Recent research shows that approximately one-of-3 Medicare beneficiaries receives painkiller prescriptions from multiple providers, which may essentially increase the risk of injury and even death.

What's even more concerning regarding the findings is that many doctors were unaware that their patients were already being prescribed prescription drugs.

Over the past 20 years, the use of narcotics, also known as opioids, including painkillers like oxycodone, hydrocodone and morphine, has steadily increased. Researchers have found that being prescribed painkillers by multiple doctors could be a source of the problem.

The new study examined over 1.2 million medical records of Medicare patients who had received a prescription opioid. It showed that nearly 35 percent received a prescription from more than one doctor. It also suggested that close to a third of the group received prescriptions from four or more doctors, according to The Boston Globe.

"As physicians, we tell patients not to drive when they take opioids, but we also need to tell them that it can be dangerous to receive these medications from more than one provider," said Anupam Jena, one of the researchers, via The Almagest. "And we need to use tools like Massachusetts' new drug monitoring program to follow up and make sure that doesn't happen."

Researchers believe that these findings give a glimpse into the distribution of prescription drugs, with the potential to have new monitoring programs that could curb the use of painkiller addiction and even death.

What do you think?