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  • BDD Moderators: Keif’ Richards

Can an outpatient program disclose your treatment information to your regular shrink

P

PlurPsyed

Bluelighter
Joined
Dec 11, 2011
Messages
391
Location
Brooklyn, ny
I went to this outpatient program a few times for opiate addiction and they were perscribing me suboxone. They asked me if I was on any other medication and I told them I was on klonopin and adderall. The doctor there told me that they woud have to contact my regular doctor and inform him of my treatment because you cant mix suboxone with benzos. I never gave them my shrinks name or anything and somehow the other day when I saw my regular shrink he had all my information from the outpatient program and now is telling me he wont give me meds anymore unless I regularly go to outpatient therapy. Was it legal for the outpatient program to disclose my treatment information? I dont remember consenting to anything. Also how the hell did they get my shrinks contact info
 
Apparently they got the information from your primary doctor. It's probably in the fine print on the papers you signed upon joining.
 
^ this (mostly).

HIPPA laws are pretty solid and most physicians are terrified of violating them and facing repercussions but if your physicians are in a network together and your insurance covers that network (mostly commonly with an HMO), then it's possible they can share information over a database. Outside of this, you have to sign consent forms for ANY medical information to be release and shared to anyone, other physicians included.
 
Can't mix suboxone with benzos? Since when? i was on sub for over a year, and that same suboxone doctor also was prescribing me 4mg of clonazepam a day.
 
^ generally speaking, controlled substances are contraindicated in those with substance abuse histories. due to the greatly higher change of misuse/abuse or triggering past addictive behavior. There is no formal restriction however many doctors who treat addiction (especially those prescribing methadone or suboxone prohibit the use of bezodiazepines in this population. It varies by region state, physician and individual practice. All my have their own policies in place regarding such.

The well-documented phenomenon of methadone users dangerously mixing their dose with benzos (licitly or illicitly) to achieve a high closer to heroin anc. While buprenorphine does not cause anywhere near the risk of fatally when combined with benzos, many physicians are either ill-informed or overly cautious - some out of personal prescribing practice and other our of employer policies, DEA scrutiny etc,. The misuses of this class of drugs is pervasive through the medical and addiction treatment industries. These drugd are used quite efficaciously in the short term to treat severe anxiety/panic while other forms of treatment such as CBT, EMDR for PTSD, exposure therapyies etc. are utilized to treat the anxiety. Benzodiazepines are not the most effective anxiolytics when it comes to long term use and can have clinically significant effects that can be worse than what they were originally used for including exacerbating baseline anxiety over time).
 
Read the fine print next time lol
Once you said hey I'm a drug addict help me support my addiction government then you give up all rights to stuff like that pretty much eevry doctor/dentist you go to will know you are a drug addict.
 
The out patient program I was forced to go to awhile back wanted all my dr information. They said it was to make sure I was getting treated properly. I told them to go fly a kite. They also wanted my insurance information even though I had checked with my insurance and they had said it wasn't covered. He said we still need it. I said, no you dont. Not to mention if you go to one of these places because of the criminal justice system then they make you sign to share all this information with the probation officer and the government.

You can request a full copy of your medical records from both places. You can also remove any authorization you may have signed previously by doing it in writing. You can also contact the rehab and ask them what legally gave them the right to contact your Dr.

Will the outpatient even let you participate while on subs, benzos, and amphetamine? Most places at least the benzos and amphetamines would not be aloud.
 
Much like when cops pressure you into searching your car, even though you have the absolute right to say no (unless they have a warrant or probable cause), some treatment centers and especially the judicial system will often try to pressure you to allow everything to be shared and attempt to coerce individuals to allow them to do so but as the above poster said, it's YOUR right to say no and if its in your interest to do so, I would recommend it. Especially with the judicial system, you don't want to give them one iota of ammo that can be used against you. We need to protect our privacy and not be bullied into letting authorities push us into releasing this information.

Does anyone know if they have 1-way release waivers? Say you're in treatment and your clinicians claim that they need your medical records and history of treatments to ensure your safety, you agree to allow them to send their treatment *to* your primary physician to ensure there are no contraindicated treatments occurring without your primary reciprocating and sending your confidential files back to the physicians treating you for addiction (especially if court-ordered).
 
When the law gets involved you certainly lose a substantial amount of rights. I think drug courts are certainly an improvement over locking up non-violent drug "offenders" but coercing someone into treatment just leaves less spots available for people who need and are ready for help and those forced into treatment by the CJS are less likely to fully commit and submit to treatment.

At least in the state I was trained, around 50% of those in treatment were ordered there by judges so on the one hand, many DO get clean directly as a result of intervention from the criminal justice system but overall, I still don't think it's right to take away people's rights and force them into treatment. We need to fund addiction and mental health treatment as well as move the field toward a harm reduction rather than abstinence-only perspective instead of continually cutting funding for mental health services and allocating law enforcement funds from actually keeping us safe to putting drug users through 'the system'.
 
I had the same exact thing happen to me minus the clonazepam and the fact the outpatient program wasn't scripting me buprenorphine. It was actually the best (by far) out of the 3 treatment programs (all outpatient) I've given a shot. For the most part the counselors/group leaders knew their shit and made me feel comfortable.

Anyway, I stupidly told them where I was getting my Adderall script at the time and they pretty much stronger-armed me into signing a release to talk to my prescribing neurologist at the time because I needed to complete that program in order to stay in compliance with the court system.

In a way, one of the drug counselors (who I actually was very fond of before this) essentially 'tricked' me by telling me they only wanted to confirm with the perscriber of the Adderall that I was actually getting it and what my dose was and I still told her I wanted to leave my ADD treatment alone as I was happy with how it had been working for me for a few solid years at that point.

At that point she pretty much told me I would be unable to complete the program if I didn't let them talk to my neurologist and had to reluctantly agreed when she assured me she wasn't trying to get my ADD treatment changed up by dropping the Adderall. I knew this was bullshit however because right after I singed the release she started tell me "you know, there are medication based treatment options for ADD other than stimulants... have you heard of Strattera?".

To sum things up, I pretty much knew I was fucked at that point, but I had a refill coincidentally coming up 5 or so days later and I figured all I could do was hope for the best. I called the office to have my refill paper script sent to me and told my info to the secretary per usual and when it wasn't sent to my house within a few days I ended up getting a hold of the Dr. (Very hard to do as he was only in the office one day a week) and he pretty much made up some bullshit about how he wasn't dropping me because I was in treatment, but because I was about to turn 20 and he was a "child neurologist" and he couldn't see me anymore.

I was so upset at this point and knew that it was a futile effort to try to convince him not to drop me. I never found out exactly what the outpatient program told my Dr, but I knew it must have been along the lines of "he has an opiate addiction and therefore is likely to be abusing or selling the meds your giving him" which was ass backwards.I had an excellent relationship with this point and I knew he had a lot of trust for me because he gave me the option to try Adderall on the very first day I met him and he allowed me to play around with my dosage and switch from Dexedrine to Adderall as I saw fit.
 
when i was on subs, the same doctor gave me 2mg xanax 3 times a day. i never went to outpatient and received both from my primary doctor
 
^ No offense, but how does that relate to the OPs experience. I guess it shows that some sub docs are completely OK with scripting other drugs that another sub doc wouldn't script someone if they were being held hostage until they did.

Right now I have a happy medium where my bupe providor won't script other shit like ADD meds or benzos unless it's low dose during the end stages of a taper but he's OK if you have another doctor treating you with these meds. He has offered me clonidine before and if I remember right, something for sleep which I didn't get into cause I imagine it would be trazodone or seroquel and I said I wasn't interested in the moment.
 
op stated dr said you cant give subs with benzos, when obviously you can and in very high doses. also here in texas many inpatient and outpatient treatment facilities give xanax with methadone or subs. its very common here and most everybody i know in treatment is on a benzo of some sort
 
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