From the President Sylvia Emory, MD President, Oregon Medical Association OMA Working to Protect an Important Public Health Resource AS PRESIDENT OF THE OREGON MEDICAL ASSOCIATION, I’ve often used the metaphor that membership is like vaccination. With your financial commitment, you’re buying into the concept of herd immunity. The OMA and its legislative, compliance and practice advocacy teams work 24-7 to keep our profession healthy. They do this by protecting our practices from bad policy, misguided legislation or court actions. A great example making headlines now is the OMA’s efforts to protect the integrity of Oregon’s Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP). The Oregon Legislature created this important public health resource in 2009 to improve patient care by allowing prescribers and pharmacists to better manage the use of painkillers like Methadone, Codeine, Vicodin, and many other controlled substances. The importance of the database is even clearer when you consider Oregon ranks 20th in the nation in the rate of prescribing these types of pain medication. And, if you look at just the rate of prescribing for longlasting, or extended-release, opioids, the state ranks fourth nationally.1 Oregon lawmakers set a high bar for law enforcement to access the database, requiring any agency to demonstrate probable cause and get buy-in from a judge first. On multiple occasions, however, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) tried to circumvent Oregon’s probable cause standard, and Oregon went to federal court to clarify whether it had to comply with the DEA’s requests. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) joined that case and argued that the DEA subpoenas violated a constitutional protection from unreasonable searches and seizures. The judge agreed, but the DEA appealed that decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. In response, the OMA filed something called an amicus brief (“friend of the court brief”) to let the court know more about physician and patient interests in the case and why PDPMs should keep their focus on public health. Eight other west coast state medical associations and the American Medical Association’s Litigation Center also signed on. The OMA believes there could be a chilling effect on the quality of the data and the provision of the most efficacious health care for the patient’s benefit, if the federal government were to be granted unfettered access. The OMA also has concerns that providers and patients could be unfairly targeted by law enforcement because their information simply might be an outlier or associated with a particularly challenging clinical case. This is an issue that affects all of us, but no individual doctor is going to take on the DEA and say that’s just not right. That’s why the OMA and organized medicine are so important to our profession. If you’re in the middle of your day-today practice, you don’t have the time or energy to go fix these things. That’s why I continue to advocate to keep the OMA healthy and functioning at a high level, so doctors and PAs can stay focused on their patients and their passion for medicine. …no individual doctor is going to take on the DEA and say that’s just not right. That’s why the OMA and organized medicine are so important to our profession. 1. The Oregonian and OregonLive, December 22, 2014 at 8:53pm 4 Medicine in Oregon www.theOMA.org
OMA Winter 2015 Magazine
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