So, after a crazy month, I officially have my MD and have moved to where I will spend my intern year. I'm excited (and scared) for it to start. Orientation is next week, I'm sure you'll hear about it.
In the meanwhile, Mrs. mxh has started her job as a pharmacist. She works one day a week at a pharmacy in a sketchy part of town and it turns out that the doctors there are more sketchy than the patients. There are a few doctors in that part of town that are notorious for prescribing large amount of narcotics, a lot of the times without even seeing the patients. The only thing that comes out of their primary care clinics is narcotics prescriptions and their patients have a suspicious pattern of getting new prescriptions too soon. What really makes it bad, though, is that one of the doctors has a habit of just hanging out at the pharmacy and writing prescriptions for narcotics in the parking lot! Yikes! This isn't something new either, it's well known among pharmacists in the area. Why do these people still have jobs? Why isn't the state medical board stripping their licenses from them? Why aren't they arrested?
Part of the problem is that not too many people report them. But, I think, a major problem is that medical boards are notorious for not punishing their own. Medical schools emphasize fitting in and keeping the status quo. If you bring up a problem, it's better that it is discussed quietly. I think this attitude carries on to medical boards. If they punish a doctor, it'll make the news and that type of attention is something that medical boards don't like. If they ignore a problem, then everything will go an as it has. So far, it's been working, but some day, the narcotic ring that these two physicians are running will make front page news and the state medical board will wish that they have dealt with it sooner.
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