Primary care physicians criticized for weak response to opioid addiction

The sharp increase in opioid abuse and the resulting deaths hasn’t led to a strong response from primary care physicians, even though they could recognize problems in patients earlier, according to a recent article by STAT News.

The piece said primary care doctors “follow an old script” of referrals to addiction and drug treatment centers rather than taking more proactive steps, such as getting certified for addiction treatments like buprenorphine.

“We’re just watching the ship sink, even though we have the pumps to easily keep the water out,” R. Corey Waller, MD, MS, who leads the advocacy division of the American Society of Addiction Medicine, told STAT.

Waller cautions that he’s not blaming primary care physicians, saying they’ve been set up to fail, though some have resisted calls to become more educated on identifying and treating addiction.

“I’ve had conversations with a few hundred primary care doctors to try to figure this out,” Waller said. “I get comments like, ‘I don’t want those people in my waiting room.’ Ones who are more well-meaning—which is most—say they have no training to treat this disease.”

For more on why physicians say they don’t have the time to get certified and why major medical groups like the American Medical Association oppose making training mandatory, click on the link below: