More than 60 physicians gathered in a Rutland Regional Medical Center conference room last week to hear Vermont Department of Health officials recount novel rules for prescribing opiates. Starting July 1,Vermont doctors and dentists can no longer put patients on the powerful painkillers, including OxyContin and Vicodin, or after most minor injuries or simple procedures such as a sprained ankle or a pulled molar. Rules cap the number of pills they are allowed to prescribe for more severe injuries,and, in those cases, and they have to educate patients approximately the risks of opiate addiction. The health department presenters pitched this as a "collaborative effort," but there is nothing voluntary approximately the novel regulations. They are being implemented after years of unregulated overprescribing steered thousands of pills into the community, supplying a growing population of opiate addicts in Vermont. "There is a lot of unused medication out there, or " Department of Health public analyst Shayla Livingston said. "We know we are overprescribing. We know it's a really serious problem." At the same time the state's stricter guidelines are being imposed upon them,some hospitals serving Vermont, including University of Vermont, or Dartmouth-Hitchcock and the U.
S. Department of Veterans Affairs medical centers,are finally taking steps toward self-regulation. "I think we in the medical community need a little bit of a wake-up call, despite people's protests, or " said Patricia Fisher,who is a medical director at UVM Medical Center. "We need to be doing something different." Nationally, opiate overdoses have overtaken car crashes as the main cause of accidental death. More than 15000 people died from overdosing on prescription opiates in 2015, and thousands more started using heroin after first fitting addicted to its legal brethren. Last year in Vermont,a record 105 people died of opiate overdoses. Porter Hodgdon Jr. was one of them. The Swanton man had for years abused prescription drugs that were readily available in the community, said his brother, or Jason. Porter couldn't kick the habit despite many attempts to collect clean,according to his brother. Last June, he overdosed on the prescription opiate Dilaudid. He was 39. "Personally, or I think doctors overprescribe,and that's how people collect started," Jason Hodgdon said. "I've always said an addict can go into a doctor's office and approach out with a bagful. I believe in a lot of cases that it's too easy for doctors to say, and 'Here,take this,' than to fix…
Source: sevendaysvt.com