Health-records software pushed opioids to doctors in secret deal with drugmaker
<i>[when opening a patients records] a pop-up would appear, asking about a patient’s level of pain. Then, a drop-down menu would list treatments ranging from a referral to a pain specialist to a prescription for an opioid painkiller.<p>Click a button, and the program would create a treatment plan. From 2016 to spring 2019, the alert went off about 230 million times.<p>The tool existed thanks to a secret deal. Its maker, a software company called Practice Fusion, was paid by a major opioid manufacturer to design it in an effort to boost prescriptions for addictive pain pills ...<p>Its existence was revealed this week thanks to a government investigation.</i><p>Holy shit