Ex-VA doctor says she was forced out after limiting opiate prescriptions

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Ex-VA doctor says she was forced out after limiting opiate prescriptions
The Center for Investigative Reporting
Aaron Glantz
The Center for Investigative Reporting
Byron Pitts
ABC News
Feb 25, 2014

Dr. Basimah Khulusi says she was forced out of her job as a rehabilitation specialist at the Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Kansas City, Mo., after patients complained that she would not prescribe high doses of opiates. She says many of her patients had been addicted to opiates for years yet received escalating doses from VA doctors as their tolerance built.
Credit: ABC News

On the eve of a congressional hearing about the Department of Veterans Affairs’ skyrocketing use of narcotic painkillers, a former VA doctor has stepped forward with new allegations about the agency’s prescription practices.

In an exclusive interview with The Center for Investigative Reporting and ABC News, Dr. Basimah Khulusi said she was forced out last year after patients complained that she would not prescribe high doses of opiates.

“I had to do something about it. And I tried,” said Khulusi, a rehabilitation specialist who worked at the VA hospital in Kansas City, Mo., for five and a half years. “And then, you know, I was let go.”

In September, CIR revealed that VA prescriptions for four opiates – hydrocodone, oxycodone, methadone and morphine – surged by 270 percent between 2001 and 2012.

That far outpaced the increase in VA patients and contributed to a fatal overdose rate of nearly double the national average, the agency’s own scientists found.

CIR’s report helped spark a congressional hearing. At that hearing in October, VA officials promised to present a plan to address problems with opiate prescriptions within 30 days. A follow-up oversight hearing is scheduled for Wednesday.

Khulusi said the majority of veterans she saw in the pain clinic already were addicted to prescription opiates – receiving doses as high as 900 narcotic pain pills a month and 1,000 milligrams of morphine a day, 10 times the level she considered safe.
read more here VA's lack of pain treatment options led to opiate addiction, veteran says VA’s opiate overload feeds veterans’ addictions, overdose deaths