Shopping for a doctor for most people is finding the right doctor to fit their needs. For a prescription drug abuser shopping for a doctor takes on a whole new meaning. Doctor shopping is when a patient seeks multiple doctors to treat the same condition. A patient may have a legitimate condition but usually the urge to doctor shop comes from needing more of the same medication from building up a tolerance leading to addiction.
A few weeks ago, I caught a patient doctor shopping. Looking back, the patient was always anxious. This patient had all of the signs of a doctor shopper-using multiple pharmacies, always paying cash, and if there was a problem with a prescription just wanting to take the prescription back instead of allowing me to call the doctor to question the prescription. The patient used multiple pharmacies in the same chain; she used other chain pharmacies and some independent pharmacies. When she used pharmacies in the same chain, she knew she had to wait 30 days to fill the controlled medications like Klonpin, Vicodin or Ambien. She tried to always use the same doctor since she knew my chain pharmacy would allow me to look in the computer to see when she last filled the medication and which doctor wrote the prescription.
The laws about waiting for your previous supply of controlled medication is to deter abuse. This patient alerted me when she came to transfer her prescription from other pharmacies. She bought in bottles filled within days of one another of the same medication. When I called the other pharmacies, the pharmacists were shocked that this patient was using multiple pharmacies and multiple doctors. When I spoke to the doctors, one had no idea about the other. The patient had told one doctor not to contact her previous doctor because of a bad relationship. This patient committing a crime but really she needs to admit her problem and get treatment. The amount of medications she is taking will seriously harm her. As a pharmacist, I do not want to get this patient arrested but I was her to get help.
