HFPP White Paper on Collaboration Against Doctors

In January, 2017, HFPP (Healthcare Fraud Prevention Partnership) released a white paper titled

“ Healthcare Payer Strategies to Reduce the Harms of Opioids”

By its title, you would assume that the goal is to actually reduce any harm that opioids can cause (which is very little medically when prescribed by a physician BTW).  But that is not the case. It is actually a coming together of various factions to attack the doctors prescribing opioids and the patients taking them.

Because people have a tendency NOT to read posts through, I will highlight the significant words in the White Paper in purple that designate the real purpose and the planned data sharing.

The primary author of this white paper was David B Rein of NORC at the University of Chicago whose specialty in research is on Hepatitis and vision problems, not opioids.

In the overview of this White Paper, the focus on attacking doctors is evident.

“Healthcare payers [insurance companies], employer organizations, and law enforcement all have strong motivations to combat the inappropriate prescribing of opioids….”

“Payers can help to combat the opioid crisis by identifying and sharing strategies,”

“Payers collect and administer a large amount of healthcare information that can be used to identify and intervene on behalf of patients at risk of opioid-related harm, as well as to target fraud, waste, and abuse in opioid prescribing.”

In spite of the fact that most of the wasted money for insurance companies is in non-opioid treatments, like surgeries and steroid injections, they are targeting prescribers.

What HFPP is:

HFPP is a voluntary, public-private partnership between the federal government, state agencies, law enforcement, private health insurance plans, employer organizations, and healthcare anti-fraud associations to identify and reduce fraud, waste, and abuse across the healthcare sector. HFPP partners regularly collaborate, sharing information and data. The organizations dedicated to the attack on opioids are listed on the right as “Champions”. Their white paper is designed to describe the best practices on opioids for consideration by all healthcare payers. Notice that throughout the white paper, HFPP states that their intent is to ensure access to medically-necessary therapies.

The HFPP approaches

1. Share resources, policies, and practices that connect patients to care with optimal outcomes, ultimately reducing fraud, waste, and abuse related to opioids.
2. Identify and mitigate potentially fraudulent, abusive, or wasteful activities related to opioids. This involves coordinating and cooperating with law enforcement and governmental or regulatory bodies.
3. Engage in studies and information sharing techniques to identify effective opioid misuse and OUD mitigation strategies.

HFPP Priority Actions

1. Train providers on the CDC Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain.
2. Promote access to and usage of Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT) for patients who misuse opioids or have an OUD.
3. Promote the availability of naloxone.
4. Use data to identify fraudulent, wasteful, or abusive practices associated with opioids in order to target corrective actions. They encourage the sharing of data to identify “at-risk” patients, aberrant or suspicious opioid prescribing, and drug diversion schemes. This information would be shared with investigative resources for intervention—i.e. targeting doctors.
5. Identify and disseminate effective practices. Also, to identify patients at risk and providers whose opioid prescribing patterns fail to comply with quality indicators—such as the CDC Guideline for prescribing opioids for chronic pain.

The Methodology for developing strategies:

Strategies relating to nine topic areas were presented to the October 2016 special session where they were discussed. The participants privately nominated the 3 strategies that they felt represented the highest value fur further review. Based on this feedback, the TTP selected 8 strategy areas for literature review and presentation in the White Paper:

• Provider education and communication
• Patient education and communication
• Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT)
• Promotion of the distribution and use of naloxone
• Promotion of opioid alternatives for pain relief and management
• Coordination of information systems
• Payer use of PDMP information
• Utilization review facilitated by e-prescribing practices.

Analysis

So basically what we are dealing with is a collaboration between insurance companies, the government, and law enforcement to put your doctors in prison because they prescribe opioids. They are using third party data analysis companies to form algarithms (such as the Narx Score) to compartmentalize patients and their doctors. The basis for these attacks are based on the government propaganda that opioids are harmful. But since that is not the truth but pure propaganda in order to attack doctors for money, this shows that insurance companies are simply climbing on the gravy train.  This is shown by the fact that the government is attacking doctors for the private insurances like Anthem or Blue Cross in federal courts, using taxpayer dollars while the insurance reaps the benefits.

Do doctors and their patients have a chance against this collusion?  Is there a way to “fight city hall”?  Only if people learn the truth which we provide right here on Doctorsofcourage.

This is post 2 of a series.  In the future posts we will break down the HFPP approaches and show how they are designed to attack your doctors through data sharing that should be illegal.