New Government Opioid Targeting Initiative

It should come as no surprise that the United States is currently battling a major increase in the cases of opioid abuse and that many states, including Oklahoma, have been hit hard. Efforts to address this are underway at every level of government. At the federal level, the Department of Justice (DOJ) recently announced an initiative targeting physicians and pharmacies and their practices regarding prescription opioids. As part of this initiative, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a new Opioid Fraud and Abuse Detection Unit as a pilot program. This unit is designed to combat healthcare fraud in two steps. First, it will purportedly use enhanced metrics to track and trace opioid prescriptions and identify doctors and pharmacies who are outliers in such prescriptions. The DOJ claims that this will identify healthcare providers who prescribe at rates that are significantly higher than their peers. More