NBC News reports that CVS was involved in a government crackdown on painkiller abuse in 2012 and began cutting off prescription-heavy doctors soon after. In a letter published in the New England Journal of Medicine, doctors from CVS explained that, “[p]harmacies have a role to play in the oversight of prescriptions for controlled substances, and opioid analgesics [or painkillers] in particular.”
The authors noted that prescriptions for painkillers increased by over 300 percent between 1999 and 2010 while deaths due to painkiller overdose shot up four-fold in the same time period. It is now the second most common cause of accidental death in the United States and comprises 75 percent of all medication overdoses. A report from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) released in July found that prescription painkiller overdoses killed more women in 2010 than car accidents or cervical cancer.
Doctors may over-prescribe dangerous painkillers for personal profit. Many of them operate out of so-called “pill mills” — cash-only centers that dole out pain prescriptions to young patients who may have an addiction disorder.
“Our program is certainly not a comprehensive solution, but it provides some sense of the kind of inappropriate prescribing that is going on in our health care system,” said CVS spokespeople in their letter.
Article Appeared @http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/08/22/2510331/cvs-painkillers-epidemic/
Article Also Appeared @http://blackubiquity.com/business/item/15588-cvs-pharmacy-will-cut-off-prescription-privileges-for-doctors-who-prescribe-too-many-painkillers