The DEA office in Phoenix announced TIP411, a technology allowing doctors, nurses, pharmacists and others with knowledge of illegal prescription drug transactions to submit tips anonymously via text or an online form. ... Read more»
The DEA is reclassifying “hydrocodone combination products” under the Controlled Substances Act, which will more tightly restrict access. The regulation, which took effect Oct.6, is a response to the widespread misuse of prescription pain killers.... Read more»
Ophthalmologists are seeing red over a bill that would expand the ability of Arizona optometrists, who aren’t medical doctors, to prescribe medications.... Read more»
Earlier this week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration urged health care providers to stop writing prescriptions for pain relievers containing more than 325 milligrams of acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol. ... Read more»
Need another reminder of how much drugmakers spend to discover what doctors are prescribing? Look no further than new documents from the leading keeper of such data. ... Read more»
Medicare plans to arm itself with broad new powers to better control — and potentially ban — doctors engaged in fraudulent or harmful prescribing, following a series of articles by ProPublica detailing lax oversight in its drug program. ... Read more»
We talked to dozens of experts on how Medicare is wasting hundreds of millions of dollars a year by failing to look into doctors who disproportionately prescribe name-brand drugs. They struggled to explain why some doctors wouldn’t routinely pick cheaper generics.... Read more»
Medicare is wasting hundreds of millions of dollars a year by failing to rein in doctors who routinely give patients pricey name-brand drugs when cheaper generic alternatives are available.... Read more»
Experts say an epidemic of prescription drug abuse in Arizona is fueling a spike in heroin use. “The gateway to heroin use is through prescription pain pills containing oxycodone and hydrocodone,” said a Scottsdale addiction doctor. “Over 95 percent of heroin addicts that I see got their start using prescription opioids.” (with video)... Read more»1
More people in Arizona died from drug overdoses than from car accidents in 2010, according to a report Monday that said the state had the sixth-highest overdose rate in the nation that year.... Read more»
Today, we share some of the more prominent proposals to reduce the harm from one of America’s most widely used pain relievers.... Read more»
When someone seeks prescription painkillers from physicians and pharmacies in Yavapai County, a database shows when that person last received the drugs. The Prescription Drug Monitoring Program is a pilot for an initiative Arizona officials intend to take statewide to combat prescription drug abuse.... Read more»
Don't flush your old medications, or throw them in the trash. You can dispose of prescription and over-the-counter drugs properly at a Dispose-a-Med event Saturday morning. ... Read more»
Got little bottles of unknown pills cluttering you medicine cabinet? You can dispose of prescription and over-the-counter drugs properly at the Dispose-a-Med event Saturday in a safe, anonymous way. ... Read more»
Prescription painkillers such as oxycodone or methadone have increasingly been involved in overdose deaths in Arizona in recent years amid a national trend of skyrocketing numbers of drug overdose deaths in the past decade.... Read more»
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