Posts tagged CURES.
Death Certificate Project: A Dragnet!

The Medical Board of California (“MBC”) began this project in 2013 when it required coroners to inform it of deaths resulting from opioids.  The influx of coroners’ reports triggered an intense enforcement effort by the MBC to mine the data in the CA Department of Justice’s Controlled Substance Utilization Review and Evaluation System (“CURES”) to identify physicians who prescribed for the persons identified in death certificates.  The MBC has conducted a veritable deluge of formal investigations of physicians and has filed an unprecedented number of accusations based on this single source.

Posted in Managed Care

Effective January 1, 2019, Health & Safety Code Sections 11161.5, 11162.1, and 11165 were amended to, among other things, provide that the Department of Justice implement a system by which prescription forms for controlled substance prescriptions should each have a uniquely serialized number."

The statutory amendments established the way in which the prescription forms must be printed, the various features that the prescription forms must include, and the way in which the dispenser of controlled substances must report the serial number to the Controlled Substance Utilization ...

There is a host of new, ever changing, and conflicting guidelines from a multitude of regulators and academic societies. This evolving and uncertain landscape is making the life of a practicing pain physician in the midst of today’s nationwide opiate epidemic…painful.

Here are 10 tips to help you avoid Medical Board discipline when prescribing opiates:1

1.  Don’t Prescribe Opiates Unless…

  • The patient has exhausted all reasonable alternatives
  • There is medical indication

    - Recently documented objective evidence of/consistent with patient’s pain complaints

  • You have ...

Starting October 2, 2018, health care practitioners authorized to prescribe, order, administer, or furnish a controlled substance must query, or consult, the Controlled Substance Utilization Review and Evaluation System (CURES) database and run a Patient Activity Report (PAR) on each patient the first time the patient is prescribed, ordered, or administered a Schedule II-IV controlled substance. First time is defined as the initial occurrence in which a health care practitioner intends to prescribe, order, administer, or furnish a controlled substance to a patient and has ...

Recently, the Medical Board of California circulated an open letter, known as a Prescriber Guidance Letter to all practitioners in California who prescribe opiates.  The letter was authored by a statewide workgroup on Prescription Opioid Misuse and Overdose Prevention.  The workgroup includes the Medical Board of California, the Board of Pharmacy, the California Department of Public Health, the DEA, DMV, California Department of Justice, California Health and Human Services, California Society of Addition Medicine, and California Healthcare Foundation, among others.

The ...

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