Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Opiate Entrepreneur (def):

(n) individual with an unreasonable number of  ER visits for bogus medical complaints, frequently involving improbable, nonsensical, or fictitious injuries causing severe unrealistic pain who seeks narcotics for the purpose of resale. See also: squirrel. 

This is nothing new except they are more aggressive and are more likely to get what they want thanks to hospital mandates on patient satisfaction.  This is behavior what turns ER nurses cynical and suspicious.  The docs see these people ocasionally; the nurses work every day and can usually recall at least a couple of their visits.  Today I had 6 of them within 2 hours.  What they had in common:

1.  More than 12 visits each for pain-related complaints
2.  No job.
3.  No insurance
4.  No ID
5.  No credibility
6.  No intention to pay anything for the visit.
7.  They left empty handed