Area ER Doctors To Limit Who Gets Prescription Pain Meds

As prescription pain medication abuse continues to rise, area emergency rooms will likely go Oxy Free in the next few months, meaning patients might get a little more tough love.

Fed up with patients that don’t have legitimate reasons for taking prescription pain medications, emergency room physicians in southeastern Wisconsin will soon be giving large doses of tough love to patients who are doctor shopping. Nationally, narcotic prescription medication abuse, including abuse of oxycodone and oxycontin, is on the rise. So within the next few months hospitals in Milwaukee County are going “Oxy-free” and a Racine-based emergency department is also looking into doing the same. The information-sharing group includes officials from Froedtert Hospital, Wheaton Franciscan, Columbia-St. Mary's, and Aurora Health Care. Dr. Gary Swart, medical director for the emergency departments at Wheaton Franciscan’s Elmbrook Memorial, …

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Keith Schmitz

6:58 am on Monday, December 3, 2012

Just imagine if some doc did that to Rush Limbaugh. Who knows? He might have built some character.   more ›

Editor's Notebook

Parents Can Test for Drugs, Alcohol Before it is Too Late

The Greenfield Police Department has partnered with TestMyTeen.com to offer free home testing kits.

Every week, it’s the same, sad thing. A look through the Greenfield Police Department’s daybook – a log of every call the department responds to during a one-week stretch – produces four, five, maybe even six or more calls categorized as “Drug Offense.” Just this week, Greenfield NOW’s police report round-up had five different drug-related write-ups. Five different people, all in their late 20s to early 30s, arrested for possession of marijuana or drug paraphernalia, or both. This week also included the 18-year-old “man” and 17-year-old girl who allegedly had marijuana with them during a traffic stop. Sometimes the story ends with a simple arrest, sometimes it’s much worse. It’s that younger group of users, the teens and impressionable …

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