A reader alerted me to a news story that took place out on the peninsula right before Christmas:
Yellow crime-scene tape surrounded Dr. James Rotchford’s Olympic Pain and Addiction Services medical clinic in Port Townsend’s Uptown District on Tuesday morning, as city police officers assisted state and federal agents in executing a search warrant on the premises.
According to two other articles online, the raids were a result of an investigation by the State Attorney General’s office over Medicaid fraud. The Attorney General’s office provided no details on the warrants, which are sealed for 90 days.
Rotchford’s clinic specializes in treating pain patients and those with addictions to pain medications. Because of the risks of abuse from prescription painkillers like OxyContin and Percocet, doctors like Rotchford are in a risky profession. Even doctors who’ve been cleared by medical organizations of any wrongdoing have found themselves guilty in a court of law, simply for not realizing that the folks they were prescribing to were supplying the black market. As a result, there are precious few doctors willing to go into this field of medicine. And the recent story of Siobhan Reynolds is a frightening indicator of how dangerous it can be merely to defend an accused doctor.
As of now, no charges have been filed against Rotchford and little else is known about why his clinic was raided. My understanding of Medicaid fraud implies that they believe that Rotchford was writing improper prescriptions that were then charged to Medicaid. Someone with some more knowledge of that charge can perhaps let me know if it could possibly mean something else. In the meantime, though, it doesn’t look like we’ll get to see anything related to the search warrant until March.
The difficulty in this issue comes from the balance we need to strike between the treatment of pain and the threat of addiction. Our federal government’s approach to this delicate topic hasn’t been very balanced. Keeping addictive pharmaceuticals under wraps is their only mandate, so there’s little consideration to chronic pain patients who suffer from the downstream effects of that mission.
This imbalance briefly came under scrutiny in December when Senator Herb Kohl of Wisconsin placed a hold on the nomination of Michele Leonhart to run the DEA. Kohl thought that the restrictions being imposed by the DEA on nursing home personnel were preventing adequate pain management. He lifted the hold after getting assurances from the Department of Justice that they’d work to rewrite the rules.
Reading through the comments on the Port Townsend-based articled I’ve linked, there are strong and conflicting opinions on Rotchford and his clinic, some positive, some negative. It’s not clear yet what’s going on here, but based on the history of the DEA’s conflict with pain doctors, we shouldn’t be surprised to see Rotchford targeted, nor should we be surprised if it turns out that he’s being targeted unfairly.
For some reason, we’ve decided to let the government tell us what we can or cannot ingest. We’ve surrendered more and more personal freedom over the past hundred years than in the previous ten thousand.
What right is it of the government to tell me what substance I choose to enjoy or not enjoy?
hmm…too bad they didnt bust those idiotic potheads who burned their apartment down and killed their kids.
nobody ever said the brightest people smoked weed I suppose….
@1
Even worse, having the government tell you (and your doctor) what’s medically appropriate from a risk-benefit standpoint. Truly appalling.
Doctors are scared shitless of being charged with over-prescribing pain medication. So us folk with cronic pain are screwed. Thanks DEA and Group Heath.
re 1: So, you are saying that you do not partake of officially illegal substances? — and you consider the restrictions you live under to be the worst in 10,000 years.
And I’m also assuming that you take umbrage at being labeled an ideological idiot.
re 2: Yeah. It’s also too bad that they did not areest, try, and execute the factory owners in New Hampshire who locked all the exits to their factory so that 144 young women burned to death.
I’ll be keeping an eye on this one. We’ve been spending some time in and around Port Townsend (bought a timeshare at Kala Point a few years ago) and have been pondering the possibility of moving there in a few years when we retire.
Some of the comments to the Leader article contain suggestions of less-than-sanitary local politics. The suggestion that the clinic, and some of its somewhat scruffy clientele, might be an impediment to the “gentrification” of the surrounding neighborhood, and the fact that the mayor’s a biggie in the real estate business, are…well, interesting.
@1 Rightwingers are all for the Feds’ repressive “war on drugs.” Funny how they’re for freedom, except when they’re against it.
@2 He’s dead. What more do you want? A public whipping of his charred corpse?
@7 Are there any municipal politics, anywhere, that are sanitary.
Hi Lee,
I’m not sure if you are aware of the current rule-making occurring here in Washington State concerning treatment of non-cancer chronic pain, but major changes are coming in terms of how opiate medications are prescribed. You can learn about the rule-making process here (http://www.doh.wa.gov/hsqa/pro.....anagement/).
The Seattle Times wrote about it this fall (http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....cation=rss).
For whatever reason, the rule making has received little media attention.
@11
Thanks! I was completely unaware of that.
@1: What, you mean you think medieval peasants were more free than we are?
We’re certainly not a perfect nation, and not perfectly free, but we’re a hell of a lot better off than we’ve ever been. We have every right to be upset about and protest any restrictions of our freedoms, but the simple fact remains that we are the most free we’ve ever been.
@11 and Lee: The DoH link doesn’t work: “page not found”
I’ve had some experience with elderly relatives at the end of their lives. In pain from cancer, I’ve had medical staff argue against strong pain medication because “we wouldn’t want him/her to become addicted.”
Excuse me, but they are dying, and soon, and addiction is the least of their concerns. Would that the medical community and drug enforcement people come to recognize this.
@14
Just chop off the last ‘)’
@15
I’ve had some experience with elderly relatives at the end of their lives. In pain from cancer, I’ve had medical staff argue against strong pain medication because “we wouldn’t want him/her to become addicted.”
This is really the heart of it. And part of me also wonders how much cost plays a role in that calculation as well.
Lee @17, generic opiates can’t be all that expensive. In most cases, that’s all that’s necessary, not the expensive brand-name alternatives.
This sounds a lot like the 1992 FDA raid of the Tahoma Clinic in 1992. The crime back then? The doctors were guilty of compounding their own drugs. The problem with the bust? Doctors are licensed to compound their own drugs.
FYI: The Tahoma Clinic is still in business.
@18
Then yeah, that’s just senseless.
@5,
I refer you to Lee’s remarks @ 3.
@8,
I’m not a right-winger, rodent. I would personally like to see the War on Drugs ended and the DEA dis-banded.
Once again you don’t know what the fuck you’re tlaking about.