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There are more of these pain clinics here in Broward County than there are McDonald's restaurants: 115 so-called pill mills, vs. about 70 of the burger franchises. And that profusion contributes to one big problem: there is no tracking system to prevent patients from getting multiple pill prescriptions at once and immediately, because the clinics hand out the pills rather than making people go to a pharmacy. The business card of the Broward Pain Clinic announces, "Dispensing on Site!" - a service that's also trumpeted by dozens of other clinics. Because of that, cocaine is no longer king...
...nation's top 25 oxycodone-dispensing doctors were all in Florida in the first half of 2008; 18 of them were in Broward County, according to a Broward County state attorney grand-jury report. In South Florida overall, there were 176 pill mills, up from 66 just 14 months before. This has contributed to tourism - pill-shopping trips to the Sunshine State from Tennessee and Kentucky, where authorities have cracked down hard on similar clinics, seem to be as common as Disney vacations nowadays. In the parking lot of the Broward Pain Clinic, there are just as many license plates...
...clinics are coming under more fire than ever. Florida legislators have already passed a law that is supposed to create a database to track pain-pill purchases - as 38 other states already have. And there's more legislation in the pipeline this year, including laws that would make it illegal for anyone other than a doctor in good standing to run one of the clinics, ban advertising by the clinics and limit how much pain medicine can be dispensed at one time...
...legislating good intentions is one thing. Real solutions are harder to come by. Although the state has approved a database to track pill dispensing, there is no dedicated funding source - the legislation merely gave officials the ability to seek grants for it. The Broward County grand-jury report concluded that the monitoring program should be "swiftly implemented and adequately funded, by any means necessary." But that's a tall order in a state hard hit by the recession. (See the most common hospital mishaps...
State senator Dave Aronberg, who represents part of South Florida and is sponsoring anti-pill-mill legislation, acknowledged that money is an unsolved matter. "There are grants to get it going. Then we have to figure out a recurring funding mechanism," he says. Action must be taken, he says, because anyone can end up ensnared by addiction, given how easy it is to get pills. "I get all these stories - people telling me about their brother dying, their sister dying," he says. "These are heads of families who end up in a terrible situation because of a workplace injury...