The State Clamps Down
Because of the health crisis associated with dangerous prescription drugs, such as opioids, Texas legislators have worked diligently to help make it far more challenging to commit prescription fraud in recent years. The state currently requires all medical professionals to use highly specific prescription pads that make forgeries far more difficult to pass off. Further, the Texas Office of the Inspector General has a program in place that gathers extensive data regarding those diagnoses that require certain controlled substances and the prescriptions written and dispensed as a result. The idea is to help curb over-prescription and overuse of dangerous, potentially addictive medications, and as such, the system carefully monitors for all of the following factors:
Overall treatment amounts that exceed the equivalent of the daily therapeutic morphine dose
Prescriptions for controlled substances that are overlapping or duplicative
The use of multiple pharmacies and prescribers who are unaffiliated with one another
Multiple visits to emergency rooms that result in opioid prescriptions
The state is attempting to close some of the gaps in the system that allow openings for drug seekers to endanger their own lives.
Case in Point
According to Texoma’s homepage, a Texas woman who posed as a nurse to phone in prescriptions for herself was sentenced to a lengthy time in prison. Still, the judge suspended the sentence to probation that required clean drug tests and drug treatment classes. The woman’s original charge was at least partially based on her fraudulently filling 11 prescriptions for phentermine at the same pharmacy before the law cut up with her.
Ultimately, the woman violated a variety of terms and conditions that applied to her probation, including failing to attend her mandatory drug treatment classes and testing positive for amphetamines and alcohol. The current motion to revoke the woman’s probation is asking for a prison sentence of from 2 to ten years. The court tends to be more lenient with offenders who have drug addictions and who seek the necessary treatment, and had this nurse impersonator adhered to the terms of her probation, she could have avoided time behind bars altogether.