Pain Management News: Ohio attorney general: Last pain management clinic closed down in county hit hard by addiction
Ohio attorney general: Last pain management clinic closed down in county hit hard by addiction
The last pain medication clinic in a southern Ohio county plagued by painkiller addictions and overdose deaths was shut down Tuesday, the Ohio attorney general announced Tuesday.
Greater Medical Advance in Wheelersburg, with just one doctor, doled out 14,000 prescriptions in nine months, Attorney General Mike DeWine said in announcing the closure and four indictments.
“At one point there was over a dozen pill mills in Scioto County,” DeWine said in a phone interview. “As of this morning, there are zero. So we’re very happy about that.”
The Drug Enforcement Administration has said the southern Ohio county is one of the worst places in the country for painkiller abuse.
Tuesday’s announcement came the same day the first defendant in another so-called pill mill case pleaded guilty to illegally shuttling painkiller prescriptions to pharmacists willing to fill them.
James Sadler pleaded guilty on Tuesday to one count of diverting controlled substances at a hearing in federal court in Cincinnati. Sadler is free on his own recognizance. His attorney did not immediately return a phone message Tuesday.
A 2010 indictment against Sadler and other operators of Ohio Medical and Pain Management in Waverly alleged that in some cases, customers traveled more than 200 miles round trip to be treated at the southern Ohio clinic.
In the Wheelersburg case, a county grand jury indicted four people with charges including engaging in corrupt activity, drug trafficking and drug possession, DeWine’s office said.
The clinic’s doctor, Victor Georgescu, and its operator, George Adkins, were each charged with engaging in corrupt activity, conspiracy to engage in corrupt activity, funding drug trafficking and permitting drug abuse, according to DeWine. Georgescu was arrested in Centerville in suburban Dayton on Tuesday.
Georgescu and Adkins were not booked into the county jail by early afternoon and information about their attorneys was not immediately available. A message was left at the clinic for Georgescu; a home listing for Adkins was not functioning.
Stopping the abuse of powerful prescription painkillers has become a top priority for Ohio officials.
In 2007, drug overdoses, led by an increase in prescription painkiller addictions, surpassed car crashes as the leading cause of accidental death in Ohio. It’s a trend also seen in several other states.
In May, Gov. John Kasich signed into law a bill cracking down on pain management clinics, dubbed pill mills by their critics and blamed by health officials for contributing to hundreds of overdose deaths in Ohio each year.
The law requires the State Board of Pharmacy for the first time to license pain clinics as distributors of dangerous drugs.
The law also puts limits on how many pills a doctor could dispense directly at a clinic and tries to reduce the illegal distribution of prescription painkillers by creating a statewide system for collecting unused supplies of the narcotics.
The DEA has recently suspended the prescription-writing powers of physicians in a part of southern Ohio plagued by painkiller abuse.
More than 1,300 people died from accidental drug overdoses in 2009 in Ohio, according to the most recent data from the Ohio Department of Health. The number of fatal overdoses has more than quadrupled from 1999, when the state recorded 327 accidental deaths, according to the department.
The numbers are particularly bad in Scioto County in Appalachia, where high unemployment rates and a profusion of pill mills have led to growing addiction rates.
2011 Consensus Panel Issues New Guidelines for Intrathecal Pain Management
A panel of experts has recommended changes to the guidelines used to determine treatment via intrathecal administration for patients suffering from severe chronic pain. The 2011 Polyanalgesic Consensus Conference (PACC) brought together a group of national leaders in chronic pain management for the purpose of updating their current algorithm to standardize decision-making among providers and improving the technical quality of care in chronic pain.
The 2011 PACC guidelines for management of nociceptive and neuropathic chronic pain by intrathecal drug delivery recommended ziconotide, among other drugs, as a first-line intrathecal treatment. The panel recognized that ziconotide should be titrated in a low and slow manner. Ziconotide was also recommended by the 2011 group as the preferred option for intrathecal administration compared to opioids when there is a concern for recurrent granuloma. [please see important safety information and product indication at the end of this release]
The expert panel recommendation was based on an extensive literature search and an expansive survey with more than 15,000 clinicians worldwide since the last update in 2007. The panel also reviewed changes in the FDA status of medications and their combined clinical expertise to inform their recommendations
“The Consensus Conference was convened to review the importance of drug selection in patient outcomes; to review issues concerning granuloma detection, prevention and treatment; to consider trialing methods and candidates and to consider best practices to reduce morbidity and mortality,” said Tim Deer, MD, president and CEO, The Center for Pain Relief and Clinical Professor of Anesthesiology, West Virginia University School of Medicine, Charleston, WV.
The expert panel of 29 clinicians and the faculty of the North American Neuromodulation Society was convened by Tim Deer, MD, Joshua Prager, MD, MS, Center for the Rehabilitation of Pain Syndromes (CRPS) at UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA; and Robert Levy, MD, PhD, Northwestern, University, Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL. The results were presented during the North American Neuromodulation Society Annual Meeting, Dec. 8-11, in Las Vegas, NV.
“The importance of selecting the best drug options for intraspinal drug delivery to treat those in severe pain cannot be understated,” added Deer. “We must continue to keep all our colleagues informed of the best treatment practices in pain management and routinely evaluate treatments and patient data. Best clinical practices, experience, data and overall better patient outcomes will remain at the core of the Polyanalgesic Consensus Conference.”
Neck and Shoulder Massage Device Poses Strangulation Risk, Agency Says
The FDA has issued a new warning to consumers against the use of a massage device called the ShoulderFlex Massager, which was recalled earlier this year after it was blamed for causing at least one death.
According to the FDA, the distributor, King International, has gone out of business since the firm recalled the massagers on Aug. 31, 2011, and many stores that sell the device may not be aware it is dangerous.
Likewise, the FDA says many people who purchased the massager may be unaware that it is dangerous and that King International’s 800 number established for the recall has been out of service.
The ShoulderFlex Massager is a personal massage device sold in retail stores, via catalogs, and over the Internet. It is intended to provide a deep-tissue massage to the neck, shoulders, and back area, while lying down.
But the FDA says hair, clothing, and jewelry can become entangled in the device and cause serious injury or death from strangulation.
There have been reports of one death and one near-death, due to strangulation, associated with the use of the ShoulderFlex Massager.
“The ShoulderFlex Massager poses serious risks,” Steve Silverman of the FDA says in a news release.
Silverman, director of the FDA’s Office of Compliance in its Center for Devices and Radiological Health, says, “consumers should stop using this device, health care providers should not recommend it to their patients, and businesses should stop distributing and selling the device.”
The FDA says it discovered during a recent compliance audit that King International had gone out of business and that it had not followed through with recall procedures.
The FDA warning includes a recommendation to “safely dispose” of the massagers. It says the massage fingers should be removed and disposed of separately from the device, and the power supply disposed of separately, as well.