Opioids Question about narcotic contract (pain management).

[an2434]

Hi,

I have a question about narcotic prescription contracts, and found this forum upon googling. I am a pain management patient and was prescribed some 5 mg hydrocodone tablets to take until an upcoming surgery next month. I was asked to sign a contract, which I happily did. I found myself in the hospital this weekend for an infection from an unrelated surgery I recently had, and was prescribed hydrocodone at a higher dose and frequency to take for pain following a surgical procedure I had while in the hospital. Because I already had a prescription for the hydrocodone from my doctor, I didn't fill the scrip from the hospital. But, because the hospital scrip was prescribed more often, I have used up more of the original scrip than expected.

My question is this – how would my original doctor find out if I filled the scrip from the hospital? I live in NY state, and the original doctor is in a different town than where I was hospitalized this weekend. I suppose I could call my doctor and just ask permission to fill the second scrip, but I have a lot of shame around needing to take these medications to begin with. And as most of you all here probably know, there is a huge stigma around these drugs – even if prescribed. I will most likely just call the original doctor, but I was curious to know how these contracts work and how they would even know if I filled the second scrip.

For the record, the first scrip was 1 5mg tablet every 6-8 hours, and the second was 1-2 tablets every 4 hours.

Thanks for any info you might have about this!

A

 

[michael]

dude, just tell the doctor you were given another script. you should have done this right away - it would have avoided any problems.

 

[an2434]

I just got out of the hospital yesterday, and my doctor isn't in the office during March. He only works every other month. So I won't be able to talk to him for a couple more weeks when I have a pre-op appt for my next surgery anyway. The best I could do is leave him a message, which is why I am asking about the contract.

 

[T. Calderone]

If your regular doctor isn't in the office, there should be another doctor or office manager to talk to. Being that you needed to have emergency surgery I would hope they take this into consideration. To answer your question, this doctor or practice may not find out but the pharmacy will if the first prescription was within 30 days ago. The database they share is designed to catch people doing exactly this even if you opt to pay cash instead of using insurance. I'm not sure how it works it New York as I'm in Florida.

I would phone the doctor's office tomorrow and let them know what happened. Tell them exactly what you said here and that you don't want to violate the pain contract.

 

[tricomb]

That's a clear violation of the terms of MY California chronic pain clinic contract, we don't allow this sort of discussion here please read the BLUA and OD guidelines as you agreed to upon creation of your account. Thanks and welcome to Bluelight.

For the record, all you would have had to do before "happily filling the prescription for Vicodin" or whatever, was WAIT and call your pain clinic. Then, had you explained the given circumstances, and they would likely have contacted your other prescribing physician PROBABLY to help you out, not to cock-block you medication wise so-to-speak....

Yeah as in, the reason they want to be involved with any other narcotic you get prescribed is they want to HELP YOU by talking to the other hospital/doctors and letting them know some basics about your medical history like medication allergies, your level of opioid dependence and therefore tolerance, and that as a result, during this time, you might temporarily need a higher dose of hydrocodone, and in the likely event that there are some laws you don't know about that to the DEA, make your doctor look like he's running a phoney operation by allowing patients to doctor shop, for whatever reason, your pain clinic wanted to be the doctors who wrote the prescription for the hydrocodone or whatever THEY DECIDED THEY WANTED YOU TO DO during the MONTH before your surgery. That part of the contract is (IN MY BEST SPECULATION) in there to protect you BOTH from the Drug Enforcement Administration.