DFM’s very own Sara Schlotterbeck is in the Boston Globe!
“Medical residents seek to access prescription data”
By: Felice J. Freyer
“The patient at Boston Medical Center needed painkillers, but Dr. Sara Schlotterbeck had concerns: The medical record suggested past misuse of opioids by the man.
She wanted to check the Prescription Monitoring Program, a state-run database of every prescription for controlled substances, to see whether the patient had obtained opioids from multiple providers. But Schlotterbeck, who is in her first year of residency training after completing medical school, can’t get into the database on her own.
Medical residents don’t have access — even though they’re allowed to prescribe controlled substances.
As the state grapples with a deadly and still-growing opioid abuse epidemic, this gap has drawn the attention of legislators and policymakers. State Representative Nick Collins, a South Boston Democrat, filed legislation that would require the state to enable medical residents to log in to the prescription database.
The Committee of Interns and Residents, a union representing doctors-in-training at Boston Medical Center and Cambridge Health Alliance, is collecting signatures on a letter asking Governor Charlie Baker to expand access. And the state Department of Public Health is working “to address this issue in a timely fashion,” spokesman Scott Zoback said.
In the case of her recent patient, Schlotterbeck managed to track down a fully licensed physician who had time to look up the patient’s record for her. She learned the patient had received more than 50 prescriptions from about 20 medical professionals in the past year.”
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