Politicians from both parties and government bureaucrats are rushing to look into allegations of overmedication, retaliatory management practices and preventable overdose deaths at a Wisconsin VA hospital, revealed by CIR.
Opiates
Prescriptions of four potent opiates to veterans more than tripled in the decade after 9/11, contributing to drug abuse, addiction and suicide. The VA is trying to combat the problem, with uneven results.
Posted inHealth Care, Opiates, Returning Home to Battle
Opiates handed out like candy to ‘doped-up’ veterans at Wisconsin VA
Doctors at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs medical center in Tomah, Wisconsin, hand out so many narcotic painkillers that some veterans have taken to calling the place “Candy Land.”
Posted inHealth Care, Opiates, Returning Home to Battle
VA hasn’t followed own rules on narcotic prescriptions, audit says
The Department of Veterans Affairs’ failure to follow its own rules governing the prescription of addictive narcotic painkillers has contributed to overdoses and deaths, according to the agency’s inspector general.
Posted inHealth Care, Opiates, Returning Home to Battle
Ex-VA doctor says she was forced out after limiting opiate prescriptions
On the eve of a congressional hearing about the Department of Veterans Affairs’ skyrocketing use of narcotic painkillers, a former VA doctor has stepped forward with new allegations about the agency’s prescription practices.
Posted inHealth Care, Health Care for Veterans, Opiates, Returning Home to Battle
Action on the VA’s pain pill habit
On our debut pilot, reporter Aaron Glantz uncovered how the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has been prescribing highly addictive pain medications at an alarming rate. He returns to the show to discuss how lawmakers might address the spike in opiate prescriptions.
Posted inHealth Care for Veterans, Opiates, Returning Home to Battle
Ex-VA doctor says she was forced out after limiting opiate prescriptions
Dr. Basimah Khulusi says she was forced out of her job as a rehabilitation specialist at the Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Kansas City, Mo., after patients complained that she would not prescribe high doses of opiates. She says many of her patients had been addicted to opiates for years yet received escalating doses […]
Posted inOpiates, Returning Home to Battle
VA’s lack of pain treatment options led to opiate addiction, veteran says
Justin Minyard, an Army infantryman who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, says he became addicted to opiates prescribed by VA doctors to mute chronic back pain that began after he helped in the 9/11 rescue effort at the Pentagon. “There were better options to treat my pain, and those weren’t presented to me first,” he […]
Posted inOpiates, Returning Home to Battle
In SF, VA doctors renewed opiate prescriptions without seeing patients
Getty Images Doctors at the San Francisco VA Medical Center regularly renewed prescriptions for highly addictive narcotic painkillers for veterans they had never seen, according to a new report by the Department of Veterans Affairs’ inspector general. The report also documented seven cases of opiate overdose among patients at the facility and determined doctors “did […]
Posted inOpiates, Returning Home to Battle
Video: Drugging America’s Veterans
When it comes to painkillers, the United States consumes 80 percent of the world’s supply, according to American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians. More Americans now die from painkillers than from heroin and cocaine combined according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Among military veterans, the problem of painkiller abuse is especially striking. […]
Posted inOpiates, Returning Home to Battle
VA doctors tell House lawmakers of pressure to prescribe veterans opiates
Heather McDonald speaks about her husband’s death at a House subcommittee hearing. Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran Scott Alan McDonald died of an overdose of Percocet on Sept. 13, 2012.Amanda Voisard/The Center for Investigative Reporting Department of Veterans Affairs physicians told a House subcommittee today that hospital administrators regularly pressured them to prescribe highly addictive […]