With the current state of the medical industry going through a rather large overhaul things are changing across the board causing plastic surgeons and physicians to get caught in the crossfire of red tape and politics. With prescription drug abuse becoming a rather large epidemic many things are changing in order to slow down than rampant recreational use of pain killers in the community. The tactics for certain people to acquire these prescription drugs can sometimes be rather difficult for physicians to notice which is why the crackdown has become an important area for medicine.
According to Plastic Surgery Practice:
“The government is targeting physicians it believes are prescribing narcotics inappropriately, using the same methods once reserved for street corner drug dealers and their suppliers. One common tactic is to send undercover law enforcement agents, who normally pose as drug dealers looking to consummate a street transaction, into a medical practice to pose as a patient seeking relief from pain or anxiety. The penalties for a physician charged and convicted of dispensing a controlled substance without a legitimate basis for doing so are just as severe as those imposed on corner dealers.”
It is important for this area of medicine to be controlled by a higher power but when it starts to interfere with daily office procedure is when doctors and surgeons get caught in the middle of things. Physicians are often torn between helping their patients get over any suffering from pain and removing a dangerous ingredient from someone’s life which could create an addiction. Plastic surgeons have to be even more careful in this area because of the sheer nature of what they do.
