Member-only story
A Response to: “Why Doctors Fire Their Patients,”
About six years ago, I published a piece in the Boston Globe, “My Chronic Pain is not a Crime,” which resulted in my being “fired” from primary care. I’d been signing “pain med contracts” for over five years and the most recent included simply impossible requirements with Draconian penalties (show up within an hour if anyone in their health network required a pill count, for example, when I worked more than an hour away — on pain of a lifetime pain med ban across one of the dominant networks in my region).
I highlighted the last bit in “Why Doctors Fire Their Patients,” “the basis of health care, the human relationship between the doctor and the patient,” not because it’s true but because I wish it was.
If you’re in chronic pain, who has authority over your medication?
It ain’t just you and the Doc!
It’s government both state and federal; it’s medical societies and associations and their practice guidelines; it’s the medical corporations for which the vast majority of care providers now work; it’s drug store chains, managers, and even individual pharmacists — who can refuse to fill prescriptions because they are “uncomfortable” with what is being prescribed, in what amount, and to whom.