Program helped doctors identify OxyContin abusers

By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Careful monitoring of patients taking powerful but addictive pain relievers like OxyContin helped doctors identify abusers and steer them toward treatment, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.

The key was having a standardized program applied to all patients who were getting the drugs for conditions other than cancer.

"Physicians are not very good at predicting which patients will have problems. They want to trust the patient, and unfortunately, trust does not work well in this type of treatment," said Dr. Jennifer Meddings of the University of Michigan, who presented her findings at a meeting of the Society for General Internal Medicine in Pittsburgh.

Meddings's program was designed to help busy physicians cope with the growing problem of prescription drug abuse.

Roughly 7 million Americans, or nearly 3 percent of the U.S. population, abused prescription drugs in 2007, an increase of 80 percent over 2000, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

Opioids, like OxyContin and Vicodin, are among the most commonly abused prescription drugs. When used correctly, they can bring relief for moderate to severe pain from back injuries, arthritis and other problems.

But the drugs have become a favorite of narcotics abusers, presenting challenges for doctors who are often the target of scams from patients seeking prescriptions.

Meddings helped design and implement the program while she was chief resident of internal medicine at a busy, 60-physician clinic at Ohio State University.