Every day, medical providers are asked to serve a population that largely expects their healthcare to be free, and that everything they want is covered by insurance or government. Providers want to serve these wants and needs, but they face scrutiny on multiple levels in seeking to satisfy the patients and professional success. Perhaps the most aggressive are today's governmental actions against physicians, sourced by their patients, staff, pharmacies, vendors, and even their own partners. Pain clinics have been the most recent targets, and it's important for the medical community to learn from these raids. Better understanding and applying the basics are the best ways to avoid mistakes that could bring unfounded scrutiny.

Once upon a time, providers were attacked for not prescribing enough pain medicines. Now the pendulum has clearly swung the other way, and the mass of healthcare oversight appears focused, in large part, on the epidemic abuse and diversion of prescription amphetamines and opioid pain medications. Motivated by the bipartisan focuses on patient care, cost control, or "stamping out waste fraud and abuse", physicians are on the front lines and in the cross-hairs of regulators, prosecutors, and contractors. Additional substance and context to recent news on raids of pain clinics across Alabama and the country presents opportunities to review some basic blocking and tackling.

Originally published in the Birmingham Medical News on September 11, 2015.