Yall need help. I hate to see docs have stress from pain patients....
4. I would not recommend actively firing a pt. If you do not prescribe the meds they want b/c you think them inappropriate, give them all the naprosyn they can carry only and they will fire themselves.
As primary care odcs, we can be charged with abandoning a patient if we deny them care. This can result in a variety of penalties including loosing your license.
Sometimes the aggrevation of a drug seeking or even just non-compliant or beligerant patient is NOT worth the mental energy. It is simmpler and cleaner to "divorce" them when there are "irreconsilable differences." Then there can be no legal repercussions.
You do not need a reason to "fire" a patient as I understand it. You do have to give them time to find another physician. This may vary by state, but here in IL it is 30 days and you need to give them resources to find another doc (county medical society, their insurance company) so they cannot complain they could not find another MD.
