Taking Action when Abuse or Diversion is Suspected

"Drug seeking behavior" refers to manipulating or demanding behavior used to obtain medication for inappropriate use. Examples of drug seeking behavior include:

Try these methods if you suspect that a patient is being dishonest about his/her medication use or is simply drug-seeking:

• Office-based urine drug tests can be used to validate or disprove a patient's story. If you are prescribing one medication to the patient, he/she should test positive for that one drug and negative for all others. If he/she is negative for all drugs, it is likely that the patient may be diverting his/her medication.
• Ask your patients to bring in all of their pills and prescriptions so you can verify that they really are taking all of the medications that they claim.
• Check or have a staff member check your patients' insurance records. Insurance companies can provide protected health information as long as it is being used for treatment, payment, or healthcare operations. Helpful information from the insurance company might include which physicians your patient has seen and the medications he/she has been prescribed in the past (Schiesser, 2007).