300 doctors receive letters

Prosecutor notes opioid prescribing practices

The federal prosecutor for the Middle District of Pennsylvania has issued letters asking 300 doctors to review their opioid prescribing practices.

In letters dated Friday and announced Monday, U.S. Attorney David J. Freed wrote that the recipient doctors showed “opioid prescribing patterns for Medicare Part D patients [that] appear to be significantly different from your peers nationwide within your specialty.” The office said the judgment was made by looking at per-patient prescribing of opioids, high-dose and long-duration prescribing, and the percentage of patients getting narcotics through four or more providers.

The letters note that “the law prohibits you from prescribing opioids without a legitimate medical purpose, in amounts substantially exceeding the needs of patients, or outside the usual course of professional practice,” but they also add that the letters are “not suggesting that the prescriptions

you have written are not medically appropriate” or unlawful.

The letters note that Pennsylvania lost 5,450 people to drug overdoses in 2017, nearly twice the nationwide per capita rate, and 810 more than the prior year. The names of the recipient doctors were not released.

Mr. Freed noted in an email that “along with prosecution, prevention efforts are vital, and encouraging physicians to be vigilant in their prescribing practices promotes prevention” of opioid addiction, which often starts with pills and progresses to heroin and fentanyl.

A spokeswoman for the Middle District said she was aware of similar efforts to contact doctors who have unusual opioid prescribing patterns by federal prosecutors in Massachusetts and Georgia.

There was no immediate word on whether federal prosecutors in the Western District or Eastern District of Pennsylvania, or in the Northern District of West Virginia, were issuing similar letters.

In southwestern Pennsylvania, drug deaths appear almost certain to have declined in 2018, after years of relentless increases.

The Westmoreland County coroner’s office released a report Friday indicating that overdoses in 2018 were down 37 percent from 2017, the lowest number of accidental drug deaths in that county since 2014.

Other counties in this corner of the state also appear to be seeing a substantial downturn compared to record overdoses in 2017, based on preliminary or incomplete figures for 2018.