Kim Sveska Presents: The Opioid Epidemic: What Happens to Health Care Professionals “Breaking Bad”
FBMJ’s attorney, Kim Sveska, was a featured speaker at the Sparrow 4th Annual Pain Symposium on September 28, 2017 at the Eagle Eye Conference Center in Bath, Michigan. Sveska’s presentation titled “The Opioid Epidemic – What Happens to Health Care Professionals ‘Breaking Bad’” discussed the new, aggressive approach that Michigan’s Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA) is taking relative to the over-prescribing and over-dispensing of opioid medications. In particular, Sveska focused on the “holy trinity” concept that has been triggering investigations and licensure actions – prescriptions for an opioid (i.e. Oxycodone), a benzodiazepine (i.e. Xanax), and a carisoprodol (i.e.Soma) (and it also may include a codeine cough syrup (promethazine) – a concoction sometimes referred to as purple drank, sizzurp, dirty Sprite or purple jelly).
Appropriate opioid prescribing and dispensing guidelines, licensure actions against healthcare professionals, and criminal actions brought against physicians and pharmacists who were really “breaking bad” were also included in Sveska’s presentation.
The Sparrow Pain Symposium is an interdisciplinary conference hosted by Sparrow Health System designed to educated and inform physicians, nurses, pharmacists and other allied health practitioners on pain assessment and advanced pain management practices. Contact Kim Sveska for more information at 734-742-1800.