In Our View

LEFT IN THE LURCH

Legitimate Patients Of Accused Physicians Having Difficulty Finding New Doctors

Call it guilt by association. It's unfair, and it is having an impact on
the legitimate patients of area doctors who have been charged with the
illegal distribution of prescription drugs.

We have little sympathy for those medical doctors who have operated clinics
like fast food restaurants, seeing hundreds of patients daily and
prescribing prescription drugs after only brief consultations. Those
doctors have abandoned their oaths to help people and become little more
than pushers.

But does that mean that every patient of these doctors was an addict
looking for a fix? Not at all. But some former patients complain that is
how they are being treated. They say they are having difficulty finding new
doctors.

Blake Sypher, director of biomedical ethics at Marshall University, said
not all the physicians being arrested operated "fly-by-night offices."

He added that a physician's practice should be set up appropriately to
distinguish between drug-seekers and patients who have been left in the lurch.

Indeed, they should. And even those former patients who may be addicted to
prescription drugs will need the help of medical professionals in breaking
those addictions and again taking medicines as prescribed.

Those former patients seeking to see new doctors with established practices
are probably legitimate patients. The addicts are out looking for another
doctor who has traded his ethics to make a quick buck.