Dr. Aaron Hartman traces how a 2000 Joint Commission mandate to treat pain as a vital sign triggered aggressive opioid prescribing, raising prescriptions from 76 million to 207 million by 2013. Over 841,000 Americans have died from drug overdose since 1999, with opioids involved in roughly 75% of those deaths.
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There was a time when your doctor freely gave out opioids. Opioids weren't addictive. They could be helpful. There was a time in which giving these medications out was considered good medicine, good practice, and the result over 20+ years has been a massive opioid epidemic. Let's take a deep dive into some of the facts. I think you'll be surprised about what you find out. In 2000, the Joint Commission, which is the big, you know, these, these people literally grade hospitals. And if you don't do what they do, hospitals lose money. They can lose licensure. I'm working in a hospital system at that point in time. I was told I have to follow this recommendation. So this is a big deal. In 2000, they said, let's make pain the fifth vital sign, right? So you remember doctors' offices, hospitals, they had little happy faces. Are you 8? Are you 5? Which smile, the happy face, right? This was done in 2000 by the Joint Commission. The result was over an increase of over 76 million prescriptions from 1991 to 207 million by 2013. America has a— had at that point in time the highest per capita prescription of opioid medications. Interesting. So we, we do follow instructions when the big smart fancy people tell us to do things, many times to our own detriment. There's been over 800, 841,000 Americans have died from drug use and overuse since 1999. That's less, a little short shy of a million people. Opioids involved in 75% of these deaths. Overdose deaths have increased 850% from 1999 to 2020. 21. Studies also show that long-term opioid use actually causes opioid-induced hyperalgesia. Basically, if you take them long-term, your pain gets worse. And that's something I figured out pretty early in my career. Happens commonly with people with migraine headaches, will use them. Point is, we just got it plain wrong. We thought opioids were good. We were told by the system and well-meaning physicians who didn't want to do this, risk losing their license, getting reported to the medical board. Actually, in Virginia, all, um, This happened a lot where people were being reported to the board. And now Virginia law says all these things have to be investigated. So physicians were literally risking being investigated, reported, losing their license for doing what was best for the patient, but was against the recommendations of organizations of the structures. That's a general theme we'll talk about when we talk about blind spots. Sometimes well-meaning physicians have to fight against the flow and fight against institutions in order to do what's best for the patients. Can you think of an example of a medical blind spot, medical gaslighting? Um, we'll talk more about these, but I think you'll be surprised some of the things. Many of these you already know about. We're going to talk about these in the next couple of months. If you like this information, like, share, subscribe, and we'll take a deeper dive. And if you've had an example of this happening to you, I'd love to hear about it. Share below and we can learn some more from each other. Take care.
