Special Event
Cold
Night/Hot Topic – Opiod use and abuse deterrent strategies – 1/24/2014
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Last night I attended a special event put together by professors
at the University of Iowa College of Pharmacy. The event speakers discussed
various aspects of opiod abuse. We had a
pharmacist discuss his experience in using opiods in pain management and using
pain contracts as a way to prevent abuse. There were also speakers from the
Iowa Prescription Monitoring Program, a lieutenant from the Johnson County Sheriffs
office, a compounding pharmacist, and a lawyer from a Mallinckrodt
Pharmaceuticals. Currently, there are
challenges to developing a national prescription monitoring database so the PMP
is working to develop a program with bordering states and then hopefully expand
to other states. The compounding pharmacist spoke about how he does not accept
insurance but rather patients pay him directly and then the patients can submit
the claim to their insurance company. He
is able to do this by establishing his compounding business as a separate
corporation. The lawyer was very interesting as he discussed opiod use from a
manufacturers perspective and all the efforts their company is involved in to
reduce drug abuse. One such effort is creating dummy medications with no active
pharmaceutical ingredient and loaning them to law enforcement for drug busts. I
am glad to see that even manufacturers are thinking about this issue and I
really enjoyed hearing from all the other speakers.
