Dr. Hoover wrote 335,000 opioid prescriptions in 7 years, says she did no wrong

nbcnews.com

12 points·jonwachob91··7 comments

Assuming 1 year has 52 weeks, and 1 week has 5 working days, and 1 working day has 8 hours, that's 23 prescriptions/hour, or 2:36 minutes per prescription.

Assuming many of those are "doc, my symptoms are the same as before, can you renew my prescription"?

Those renewals probably take 10 seconds.

For an opioid, it should be more than an automatic renewal.

From the article

>First-timers paid $450 in cash to see a doctor and get a prescription, undercover investigators discovered. Returning customers paid $150 to a receptionist, who would hand out new prescriptions after asking a cursory question or two about their health, investigators found.

So the renewals didn't even come from Dr. Hoover, but from her receptionist using her prescription pad. That's crazy!

335K prescriptions x $150 = 50mil / 7years = 7 milion a year :o

Damn, that's a lot.

I think that the US has been taking a completely wrong approach to the opioid crisis. Trying to limit opioid prescriptions will just inevitably lead to users turning to the black market to get their fix. It's much safer to get opioids from a doctor, even if under questionable circumstances, than to gamble on fentanyl-spiked street heroin.

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