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August 31, 2015: Screening “An American Epidemic” – Community Education

FedUP is going local in Broward and Palm Beach

Please join this event being held on

“International Overdose Awareness Day”.

Grass roots advocacy groups, United Way of Broward County and Palm Beach Coalition on Substance Abuse are collaborating to end the STIGMA and save lives.

Community education

Rev_IOAD-8_31_15 Event Flyer

Thursday-June 18th-6PM-Fort Lauderdale-FL

Once again, Broward County FL, the epicenter of a “new” synthetic drug.

Why Broward County?

Perhaps because we have a generation of iatrogenic addicts due to the on-going grossly negligent physician narcotic prescriptions? Coupled with inadequate medical and/or treatment resources to help this generation. Of course Broward County is the epicenter and will continue to be the epicenter until the medical community steps up to the plate and helps fix the wrongs that their peers created. We are loosing an entire generation due to physician prescribed narcotics.

Taken as prescribed = dependency/addiction/death

(Read the Warning Label – and demand an “informed consent”)

Dependency/addiction/deaths are growing at alarming rates in our Veterans, post-op patients, worker’s comp patients, injured athletes, post dental extraction patients, and our elderly Medicare patients.

Thursday - June 18 - Silent March - Fort Lauderdale

 

Sample Letter customize; send electronically “National Pain Strategy” by 5/20

Please copy/personalize/paste the following letter into an email and send it to the email address below to National Pain Strategy by 5/20.  Let your voice be heard!  Be sure to add your name at the bottom and insert a few lines of your own where specified in the letter.

EMAIL: [email protected]   (copy and paste this email address to send)

Dr. Wanda Jones, Dr.P.H., Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health

Dr. Anand Parekh, MD, MPH, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health

Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health  – Department of Health and Human Services

200 Independence Avenue, SW Washington, DC  20201

Dear Drs. Jones and Parekh,

I am a parent that has either lost a child or has one suffering from the disease of addiction caused by physician prescribed opioids. [Please insert 1-2 sentences here summarizing how this CDC declared prescribed drug epidemic has impacted your life. Include the challenges in getting adequate/affordable treatment, how it feels to helplessly stand by and witness the horrible effects of active addiction, and in the worst case scenario how it felt to bury your child, family member or someone you loved.]

I appreciate the opportunity to review the Plan and submit feedback on it. However, you must understand the most recent studies negate the use of long-term opioids for non-cancerous pain (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25581257). Many of the letters you receive are paid for by Big Pharma with brilliant, strategic, calculated, and fatal marketing strategies (http://www.uspainfoundation.org/corporate-members.html). The advisory board HHS is planning to select should not include people who have significant financial relationships with opioid makers and the “advocacy groups” CAN NOT be industry funded. This advisory panel must be transparent.

I urge the Office to create an oversight body to resolve the question of “How did we get here”? Once answered, immediate steps need to be urgently taken to put an end to the narcotic dependent pandemic crisis in this country.

New mortality data indicates that medical user deaths (taken as prescribed) are surpassing the deaths of abusers (http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-publhealth-031914-122957). These deaths include Veterans, athletes, workers compensation patients, elderly patients in addition to a select few chronic diseases being treated within currently “acceptable” medical standards and yet, still causing deaths.

“Unmanaged pain” is a result of the lack of non-opioid multidisciplinary management and medical standards rather than the absence of opioids. What is “immoral and unethical” is prescribing potentially addicting and lethal opioid drugs for a wide range of disorders that have been inadequately evaluated and for which opioids have never been shown to be SAFE and EFFECTIVE long term. The documented and continuing opioid overprescribing leads to 2 of the worst possible outcomes in medicine: (1) igniting the potentially fatal and most difficult disease to treat: addiction, and (2) fatal poisoning (OD) DEATH which is the worst of all outcomes and must be prevented at all costs.

Our priorities must be prevention by avoiding opioids in most patients with chronic non-cancer pain, proper treatment of the pandemic numbers of US citizens addicted to and/or dependent on physician prescribed opioids. This includes saving the lives of the many pro-opioid advocates also submitting comments. A “National Pain Strategy” must focus on the great unmet need of non-opioid multidisciplinary therapies (more expensive/time consuming than physician narcotic prescriptions) of patients with chronic non-cancerous pain, while reserving opioids for the select minority who truly need them rather than the vast majority who are now getting them.

Sincerely,

[Insert First and Last Name, Address, City, State, ZIP]

 

ADDRESSES: 

The draft “National Pain Strategy”:

(http://iprcc.nih.gov/National_Pain_Strategy/NPS_Main.htm).

Email comments are preferred electronically to:[email protected].

Written responses should be addressed to:

Linda Porter, Ph.D., NINDS/NIH, 31 Center Drive, Room 8A31, Bethesda, MD 20892.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: Contact Linda Porter, Ph.D., NINDS/NIH, 31 Center Drive, Room 8A31, Bethesda, MD 20892,  [email protected]

 

CARA 2015 – Call to ACTION by Friday, April 29th 2015

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The Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA) of 2015 is the most expansive federal, bipartisan legislation to date for addiction support services, designating between $40 million and $80 million toward advancing treatment and recovery support services in state and local communities across the country, which will help save the lives of countless people. The bill was first introduced in September 2014, and then reintroduced in the 114th Congress in February 2015. The bill was introduced in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, and is currently sitting in the Senate and House Judiciary committees, as well as the House Education & Work Force and Energy & Commerce committees.

CARA needs your support as it moves forward through the legislative process! We urge you to get into action and contact your Senator and Representative today and urge them to co-sponsor and support CARA!

CALL TO ACTION: NATIONAL CALL IN DAY IS APRIL 29TH

If the Comprehensive Addiction & Recovery Act of 2015 is going to become a reality in 2015, key members at relevant House and Senate committees are needed to co-sponsor the bill.

In the Senate, CARA (S. 524) has been referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee.  Currently, 12 Senators have signed on as co-sponsors of S. 524.  Without support from additional members of the Judiciary Committee, the bill will not advance.

In the House, CARA (H.R. 953) has been referred to three Committees or Subcommittees.  They include: The House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations; the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Subcommittee on Health; and the House Education and the Workforce Committee. Currently, 9 Representatives have signed on as co-sponsors of H. 953.

FOLLOW THIS LINK – SCROLL DOWN TO TAKE ACTION – ENTER INFO – LINKS TO YOUR FEDERAL SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVES – SENDS LETTER

Takes all of 2 minutes to help

save lives and suffering!

JUST DO IT NOW!

LINK: http://www.facesandvoicesofrecovery.org/action/ask-your-senator-or-representative-support-comprehensive-addiction-and-recovery-act-cara-2015

Update: 4-10-15 FL Board of Medicine “discipline” (lack of) Meeting

During this physician “disciplining” (lack of) meeting where we held a “peaceful protest”, Pill Mill doctors set free with little to no reprimands to their licenses, a physician who committed automobile insurance fraud was denied reinstatement of his license, and a physician who committed Medicaid fraud had his license reinstated.

Investigative reporter Carmel Cafiero is on the case.

WSVN (Channel 7)– The Florida Board of Medicine has given a license back to a local doctor with multiple DUI’s and a grand theft conviction involving hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars.

http://www.wsvn.com/story/28864029/state-gives-felon-doctor-his-medical-license-back

So, regardless of the “public health safety issues”, we now have a convicted physician felon practicing medicine in our state. Yes, it appears that if you have an outstanding felony background, you can practice medicine in Florida. Yet, non-physician Floridians, with a felony background can even get a job at McDonald’s.

Alert for FL physicians: do not commit auto insurance fraud because you will loose your medical license, but you can commit Medicaid fraud and still keep your license. And that is how we roll in FL, by NOT “protecting the public health safety of FL citizens”. Any question why FL remains the best state to practice grossly negligent medicine?

FYI, Florida is #1, once again, for the top prescribing/dispensing of Dilaudid (hydromorphone). Pill Mills (Urgent Care Centers) alive and well, just under the radar.

As long as the physician retains their license, this man made(Big Pharm) physician controlled CDC declared fatal narcotic epidemic will continue.

More than 101 physicians who worked at the 189 now closed/administratively revoked/voluntary surrender Broward County “pain management clinics” still have a clear and active medical license.

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Peaceful Protest Board of Medicine Meeting

Peaceful Protest YPR TAM FARR 4-10-15 BOM

FL Physician Narcotic Scripts; Multi-State Devastation Continues

This is a “doctors” office?

Yes it is, in Florida.

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The self regulated FL physician community did nothing and continue to do nothing. Its very obvious, since 2009, that this is “acceptable standards of medical practice”. FL physicians must endorse this type of medical practice, as the PILL MILL physicians continue to maintain the privilege of practicing medicine in our state. Verified by the lack of disciplinary performance by the medical boards.

Why and how does ensuring “quality medical standards” and “ensuring the public HEALTH safety of FL citizens” become the job of law enforcement?

It is NOT their job, it is the job of the governor appointed medical boards, and the DOH/MQA.

They and the governor have failed to uphold this stated mission,

allowing lives to be destroyed and allowing fatalities to continue.

In addition to the destruction of FL lives and families, lives and families along the “OxyExpress”

KY/GA/OH/WVA/NY/PA/MD/NH/MA/NC/SC/TN

have been lost and devastated due to FL physicians.

The minimum requirement to run a Pill Mill is a PHYSICIAN

“The affiliated VIP Pharmacy was, authorities said, dispensing more oxycodone than any other retail pharmacy in the nation — more than 27 times the amount sold by the average Florida pharmacy and 49 times the national average. A lone doctor labored inside the clinic to accommodate the demand from drug seekers, many from other states including Ohio, Tennessee and Kentucky.”

Pill Mill Owners Turn Snitch to Cut Jail Time

http://tbo.com/news/crime/pill-mill-owners-turn-snitch-to-cut-jail-time-20150301/?page=1

Pain Doc Charged With 3 Deaths: > 17 per DOH records – FL Medical Board has done nothing

A pain management doctor in Pinellas Park is facing the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison after three people died because he prescribed them drugs they didn’t need, the Tampa Bay Times reports.

Dr. Edward Neil Feldman
Dr. Edward Neil Feldman
Credit Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office

At least 17 more deaths due to this FL licensed physician.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/courts/criminal/doctor-accused-in-three-overdoses-but-records-show-more-patients-died/2213203#gig_comment_id=$commentID$ 

 

Dr. Edward Neil Feldman was arrested Tuesday and charged in three counts tied to the deaths. He and his wife, Kim Xuan Feldman, are also being charged with five counts related to drug conspiracy, money laundering, and other illegal financial transactions, according to the Times.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/courts/criminal/grand-jury-blames-pinellas-park-pain-doctor-for-deaths-of-three-people/2212764

According to the FL DOH, Dr. Feldman has 3 Administrative Complaints (from the public) dating back to 2010.  All 3 complaints are about him over prescribing oxycodone, otherwise known to the general public as running a Pill Mill.  He is a “controlled substance prescriber” and a “dispensing practitioner” with a clear and active medical license. (Dispensing narcotics from a physician office became illegal during the 2010 legislature – thanks to Senator Fasano)

LINK to complaints NOT yet heard by the FL Medical Board after an almost 5 year delay:

https://appsmqa.doh.state.fl.us/FinalOrderNet/folistbrowse.aspx?LicId=19778&ProCde=+1501&discpln=AC+Filed

What has the FL Board of Medicine done? Nothing as usual even though their mission is to “protect the public health safety of FL citizens”. Nor has the FL Surgeon General John Armstrong done anything. He has the power to emergently suspend a physician license if “lives are in imminent danger”.
Florida is, and will remain the Pill Mill Capitol of the US. This is the reason why FL is not seeing a big spike in heroin deaths like other states  – because the Pill Mills are still here!

One can conclude that the governor appointed medical boards are fully responsible for this PHYSICIAN prescribed drug epidemic whose epicenter is Broward County. It is now a national, CDC declared epidemic, morphing into a heroin epidemic. But keep in mind, there are more deaths from PHYSICIAN prescribed drugs than heroin.  Let’s keep our eye on the ball – the PHYSICIAN,

And, the FL PDMP (E-Forcse) is not mandatory for physicians to use – see previous blog. REALLY? Nor will Senator Sobel, or any Senator for that matter, step up to the plate to protect the citizens they represent. Shameful!

More FL licensed physicians still practicing medicine with 53 deaths associated with their medical practice:

Florida: Home of the largest Pill Mills in the US

Cynthia Cadet, MD:  https://appsmqa.doh.state.fl.us/irm00Praes/PRASINDI.ASP?LicId=83379&ProfNBR=1501

Joseph Castronuovo, MD: https://appsmqa.doh.state.fl.us/IRM00PRAES/PRASINDI.ASP?LicId=101304&ProfNBR=1501

http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2011-08-25/health/fl-hk-george-pill-mill-20110824_1_pain-pills-pain-clinic-prescription-drugs

Not only SHAMEFUL but CRIMINAL!

FL’s PDMP (E-Forcse) is in jeopardy – petitioning for “mandatory” usage

The success of and data reliability of ANY data base, is first,

that it be used.

Florida physicians and other prescribers usage of FL’s PDMP (E-Forcse)

VOLUNTARY!

As a result, only 12% of prescribers are using the FL PDMP in the

The Pill Mill Capitol of the United States

 

We are petitioning YOU to help us save lives!

 

Senator Eleanor Sobel (D – District 33), Vice Chair of the FL Health Policies Committee, said she would sponsor a Bill for us making the usage of the PDMP, by physicians, mandatory for schedule II, III, and IV drugs.

http://www.flsenate.gov/senators/s33 

Eleanor Sobel

The bill would include the interstate exchange and possibly Naloxone and decreasing the 7 day window for script data entry.  We have recently spoken with her office and were told the bill is written, however Senator Sobel is having second thoughts regarding actually filing this bill.

We need all of you to call her office and tell her why Florida needs to strengthen the PDMP by mandating physician usage.

Things to say when you call and/or leave a message:

  1. The PDMP is ineffective if physicians are not using it and we will continue to lose lives.
  2. FL will continue to see unacceptable physician prescribed over dose rates.
  3. There is a federal push for the mandatory use of the PDMP federally via S.2839
  4. The AMA supports full funding and staffing for up-to-date, interoperable, at the point-of-care prescription drug monitoring programs that are integrated into a physician’s workflow. And the AMA has communicated its support for most elements of the Obama Administration’s Plan to Combat Prescription Drug Abuse and Diversion including a national PDMP with interstate exchange operating in real time.
  5. Federally, S.2839 Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act 2014, includes the mandate for usage of a PDMP with inter-state exchange operating in real time. US Senator Bill Nelson (FL-D) has cosponsored this bill. http://www.billnelson.senate.gov/

Call Senator Sobel

        954-924-3693(Broward) or 850-487-5033(Tallahassee)

Email Senator Sobel:

        Yale Olenick: [email protected]

Call/Email your Senator or Representative:

Senator: https://www.flsenate.gov

Representatives: http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/sections/representatives/myrepresentative.aspx

Thank you for helping us save lives during this CDC declared PHYSICIAN prescribed drug epidemic.

 

Heroin use is a public health emergency

that calls for legislative solutions

(8/10 heroin users started with a PHYSICIAN prescription drug)

The Washington Post – January 2, 2014

LINK: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/heroin-use-is-a-public-health-emergency-that-calls-for-legislative-solutions/2015/01/02/b9a8cb6a-8fb0-11e4-ba53-a477d66580ed_story.html

Naloxone in FL? Board of Medicine says YES!

555011_711685038848511_1183186764_n The Skeeterhawk Experiment

On Friday, December 5, 2014, the Florida Board of Medicine said “YES” to a Florida physician who was asking permission to prescribe naloxone to his patient at risk of opioid overdose, for administration by a third party to that patient, via intramuscular(IM) kits, off-label intranasal (IN) kits, or auto-injector.

Florida takes a HUGE step!

It has been a lot of work since our little One Spark project, but it has been worth every blood, sweat and tear.

Thank you, doctors, for exhibiting tremendous courage!

StoppNow (Maureen Kielian)logoand Suncoast Harm Reduction Project Suncoast Harm Reduction Project (Julie Negron and Wendy Nebrija) were in attendance to support the efforts of Skeeterhawk’s Kelly M Corredor.

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