Crackdown on Florida Pain Clinics: Practitioners Beware!
All pain clinic practitioners should be prepared for Department of Health inspections of their practices, and warned of the potential ramifications of such inspections. During these dispensing practitioner inspections, the Department is looking for signs of possible overprescribing based on controlled substance logs. If a practitioner is prescribing above a certain amount of medication, the Department has in some cases subpoenaed patient charts for review by a Board-certified pain medicine physician. If a determination is made a practitioner is overprescribing pain medication, this can lead to disciplinary action against one's license. In many cases an emergency suspension or restriction of medical licenses has occurred. Similarly, the DEA is investigating practitioners who appear to order unusually large quantities of controlled substances, and has taken action against the DEA registrations of physicians working at pain clinics, and in some cases criminal investigations have occurred.