Feds Found ‘Staggering’ Drug Testing Fraud at Tennessee Pain Clinics

By Fred Schulte, Kaiser Health News

The Justice Department has accused a defunct chain of Tennessee-based pain clinics of cheating Medicare and other taxpayer-funded health insurers out of at least $25 million in needless urine drug tests and genetic testing.

The civil lawsuit names Comprehensive Pain Specialists, also known as Anesthesia Services Associates PLLC; four of its physician owners; and a former top executive. The doctors include Tennessee Republican State Sen. Steven Dickerson and Peter Kroll, both anesthesiologists.

At its peak, CPS ran 60 pain clinics in a dozen states and treated some 48,000 patients per month, according to the suit. It shut down abruptly last summer, leaving many chronic pain patients scrambling to find a new source of narcotic medicines.

The Justice Department fraud case centers largely on the company’s lucrative urine-testing lab in Brentwood, Tenn., which CPS financed with a $1.5 million loan. The suit also alleges overbilling from acupuncture and other services offered to patients.

CPS was the subject of a November 2017 investigation by Kaiser Health News that scrutinized Medicare billings for urine drug tests.

Medicare and other federal programs paid over $70 million from 2011 to 2018 for CPS-ordered urine tests, an amount the lawsuit called “staggering.” TennCare, the state’s Medicaid program, paid more than $9 million more during that time.

“For this reason, CPS considered [urine tests] to be ‘liquid gold’ — with revenues of tens of millions of dollars for what was largely unnecessary medical testing,” according to the suit.

The chain’s owners and then-CEO John Davis “viewed every CPS patient as an opportunity to make money, without regard to the individualized need for treatment,” the suit alleges. Davis was convicted last year in Nashville on federal criminal health care fraud charges. He has since filed a motion for a new trial.

Dan Martin, an attorney representing Kroll, said in an emailed statement: “We are aware of the allegations and very familiar with the actual facts. Dr. Kroll did not engage in any wrongdoing whatsoever, and we look forward to correcting the government’s misunderstanding of the facts.”

Dickerson’s attorney, Ed Yarbrough, also issued a statement that read: “Dr. Dickerson is an honest man. We will prove that in court.” 

$8.5 Billion Annually Spent on Drug Tests

In its investigation, KHN, with assistance from researchers at the Mayo Clinic, found that spending on urine screens and related genetic tests quadrupled from 2011 to 2014 to an estimated $8.5 billion a year — more than the entire budget of the Environmental Protection Agency. The federal government paid medical providers more to conduct urine drug tests in 2014 than it spent on the four most recommended cancer screenings combined.

CPS was among the nation’s most aggressive testers. KHN found that in 2014 five of its medical professionals stood among the nation’s top billers. Anita Bayles, a nurse practitioner working at a CPS clinic in Cleveland, Tenn., generated $1.1 million in urine-test billings that year, according to Medicare records analyzed by KHN.

The Justice Department suit says that CPS believed Bayles ordered too many urine tests and overprescribed opioids and in September 2016 decided to fire her. But the decision was reversed by CEO Davis “because of her ability to generate revenues,” according to the suit. Bayles could not be reached for comment.

IMAGE COURTESY OF MARK COLLEN AND PAIN EXHIBIT

Though CPS ran six or more urine tests a year on many patients receiving narcotics, its doctors often did not review the results to make sure patients did not abuse them, according to the suit.

Kroll, who also served as CPS’ medical director, told KHN in 2017 that the high volume of tests was justified to keep patients safe and to reduce chances of black market sales of pills.

Kroll billed Medicare $1.8 million for urine tests in 2015, the KHN analysis of Medicare billing records found.

Kroll said in a 2017 interview that he and Dickerson came up with the idea to open a high-quality pain practice over a cup of coffee at a Nashville Starbucks in 2005.

But the Justice Department alleges that CPS expanded rapidly through bilking the government, conduct that its top executives and founders “failed to take any action to stop,” according to the suit.

In what is called a “particularly egregious example of this fraudulent conduct,” the Justice Department alleged that Kroll caused over 2,500 claims to be submitted to Medicare, for which CPS was paid almost $350,000, during a 10-day period in May 2017 when Kroll was on vacation in Italy.

“Because of these fraudulent claims, Kroll’s billing privileges with Medicare have been revoked,” according to the suit.

The lawsuit states that Medicare officials began investigating overcharging for urine testing at CPS in 2014 and eventually directed the company to repay the government $27.4 million in an extrapolated penalty. But CPS aggressively appealed the decision and managed to get it overturned and stay in business.

Once among the largest pain management groups in the Southeast, CPS crumbled amid financial woes that included nearly a dozen civil suits alleging unpaid debts, as well as the criminal case against Davis. In a court filing in December, the company said that it had terminated all of its employees and that its debts “greatly exceed its assets.”

In total, Medicare paid CPS over $150 million from 2011 to 2018, a large part of which was related to urine testing, while TennCare paid CPS over $32.5 million, according to the suit.

The Justice Department complaint consolidates several whistleblower cases filed against the company by doctors and other former employees. Federal whistleblower cases seek recovery of money paid improperly and can include treble damages, or three times the amount of the original overpayment.

One of the whistleblowers said he toured the lab with CPS executives and observed an “overpowering and unpleasant smell of urine.” In response, a CPS executive said, “To me, it smells like money,” according to the whistleblower’s suit.

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

Pain Clinics Ordered Unnecessary Urine Drug Tests

By Fred Schulte, Kaiser Health News

A Tennessee-based chain of pain clinics that abruptly shut down last summer faces five whistleblower lawsuits accusing it of defrauding Medicare and other health insurers by billing for hundreds of unnecessary urine drug tests and other dubious health services, newly unsealed court records show.

The federal suits target Tennessee-based Comprehensive Pain Specialists, also known as Anesthesia Services Associates, PLLC, and several of its physician owners. At its peak, CPS ran 60 pain clinics in 12 states, according to the suits, as well as a lucrative urine-testing lab in Brentwood, Tenn. CPS closed with no warning in July, leaving patients in several states distressed and scrambling to find a new source of narcotic pain medicines.

In federal court filings unsealed in Nashville this week, federal prosecutors said they would take over the urine-testing allegations and sue several CPS owners, including co-founding anesthesiologists Peter Kroll and Steven Dickerson. Dickerson is a Republican state senator representing Nashville.

Kroll could not be reached for comment Wednesday. Dickerson did not respond to an email or a phone message left at his legislative office.

It is not clear whether the whistleblowers, who include former CPS doctors and other employees, would pursue several allegations against the company that the federal government declined to join in. CPS, in an unrelated court filing in December, said the company had terminated all of its employees and that debts “greatly exceed its assets.”

Once among the largest pain management groups in the Southeast, CPS crumbled amid financial woes that included nearly a dozen civil suits alleging unpaid debts, and a criminal investigation that ensnared its former chief executive, John Davis. Davis, 41, was convicted this month in federal court in Nashville on health care fraud charges. He is to be sentenced later this year.

CPS was the subject of a November 2017 investigation by Kaiser Health News that scrutinized its Medicare billings for urine drug tests. Medicare paid the company at least $11 million for urine screenings and related tests in 2014, when five of CPS’ medical professionals stood among the nation’s top such Medicare billers. One nurse practitioner working at a CPS clinic in Cleveland, Tenn., generated $1.1 million in urine-test billings that year, according to Medicare records analyzed by KHN.

Kroll, who also served as CPS’ medical director, said at the time that the tests were justified for patient safety and to reduce chances the pills might be sold on the black market. Kroll billed Medicare $1.8 million for urine tests in 2015, the KHN analysis of Medicare billing records found.

Kroll in an interview with KHN at the time said that he and fellow anesthesiologist Dickerson came up with the idea for the pain clinics over a cup of coffee at a Nashville Starbucks in 2005.

One of the whistleblower suits alleging unnecessary urine tests was first filed under seal in 2016 by Suzanne Alt, a doctor who worked in the company’s pain clinics in Troy, Mo., and Keokuk, Iowa, from May 2014 to March 2015. She alleged CPS doctors were “strongly encouraged to order full-panel urine drug screens on each patient, every time, despite the patient’s history, compliance and risk.”

She also said that the company’s electronic medical records “made it extremely difficult to order anything less than the full panel.” Alt said she was told the Tennessee lab did about 600 of these screens daily. Another whistleblower said he toured the lab with CPS executives and observed an “overpowering and unpleasant smell of urine.” In response, a CPS executive said, “To me, it smells like money,” according to the suit.

“They were making a killing,” said Birmingham, Ala., attorney Don McKenna, who represents Alt in the case.

Another of the whistleblowers, former CPS anesthesiologist Cynthia Niendorff, alleged that the company billed Medicare about $754 for each additional urine test, even though earlier results had come back negative. She said CPS grossed approximately $6 million per month from the urine-testing lab and said about 20% of this amount was suspect, according to the suit.

Mary Butner, a former insurance specialist for CPS in Gallatin, Tenn., alleged that CPS charged some patients $1,500 for a drug test to measure blood levels of medication and $400 for a drug test designed to detect illegal drugs — charges that the suit called “grossly inflated and disproportional to the actual costs.” She also alleged that CPS would fill prescriptions for patients whose drug tests detected the presence of illegal drugs, or showed that they were not taking their medication as directed.

Butner also accused medical director Kroll of approving prescriptions for back braces when it was “clearly medically unnecessary,” including some people who had injuries to a knee or elbow.

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

Medicare Paid Millions for Bogus Lab Tests

By Fred Schulte, Kaiser Health News

Five years ago, Companion DX Reference Lab hoped to cash in on cutting-edge genetic tests paid for by Medicare.

The Houston lab marketed a test to assess how a person’s genes affect tolerance for drugs such as opiates used to treat chronic pain. It also ran DNA tests to help treat cancer and urine screens to monitor drug abuse.

But the lab went bust last year after Medicare ordered it to repay more than $16 million for genetic tests health officials said were not needed.

Companion Dx is one of at least six clinical labs mired in bankruptcy court after Medicare alleged they improperly billed the government for unnecessary urine, genetic or heart disease tests expected to cause hundreds of millions dollars in losses to taxpayers, an investigation by Kaiser Health News found.

As the nation’s bill for drug and genetic tests has climbed to an estimated $8.5 billion a year, there’s mounting suspicion among health insurers that some testing may do more to boost profit margins than help treat patients.

Medicare has slashed fees for urine tests and tightened coverage of some genetic screens, which can cost Medicare $1,000 or more per person. Private insurers, who mostly have paid these bills without question, also are taking a more penetrating look at spending on the controversial lab work.

Yet, getting these firms to repay Medicare and private insurers remains a formidable challenge. While some doctor-owned labs have dodged collection efforts for years, several testing firms deeply in debt to Medicare appear to have few assets to repay overcharges dating back years, court records show.

COURTESY PAIN EXHIBIT

“Medicare shouldn’t be paying for dubious tests, but the time to catch that is in the very beginning when [labs] are asking for payment,” said Steve Ellis, vice-president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a budget watchdog group. “They need to increase oversight so the dollars don’t go out the door in the first place.”

A spokesman for the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) had no comment. Neither did the Department of Justice, which represents the government’s interests in court.

Labs can run a range of genetic and drug tests using a saliva sample, blood or urine specimen. The price tag to Medicare can mount quickly, especially when doctors order highly specialized tests for large numbers of patients. Two bankrupt labs that federal officials say routinely overused tests to detect rare heart ailments in the elderly, for instance, could end up owing the government a total of more than $200 million, court records show.

Some labs have kept operating in bankruptcy while others liquidated equipment and sold off assets. Several bankruptcy trustees, whose duty is to ferret out assets, are suing suppliers, insurers and some doctors to recover funds.

Whether they can raise the pile of cash needed to repay Medicare is doubtful.

Companion Dx, according to bankruptcy records, had $117,497 cash on hand at the end of September. Medicare is seeking the return of $16.2 million paid to the company for services “not considered medically necessary,” according to a January court filing.

The Texas lab had no comment, but in court filings has blamed its collapse on disagreements with Medicare over the merits of its tests and government audits that retroactively disallowed claims. Medicare pays only for services it deems “medically necessary,” and audits typically take many years to complete.

Companion Dx opened in January 2012 expecting to “capture favorable profit margins that existed in connection with this cutting edge technology,” the company wrote in its bankruptcy filing.

However, starting in 2013, Medicare began having second thoughts about the validity of some tests and ultimately decided to cover them on just 1 percent of patients, according to the company. The lab declared bankruptcy in July 2016. The case is pending.

Iverson Genetic Diagnostics Inc. is another lab that turned to bankruptcy court as Medicare tried to reclaim $19.7 million, court records show. The case is pending.

Medicare took aim at the Seattle firm in November 2013 after reviewing “numerous” complaints of billings for genetic tests that patients “had not actually received,” federal officials wrote in a court filing.

A later federal audit concluded that Iverson had charged Medicare for tests that were “not reasonable and necessary.” In September 2015, about two months after Medicare called for the refund, the lab filed for bankruptcy.

Iverson denied overbilling Medicare and is appealing the Medicare decision, which it said in a court filing “was not based upon sufficient or proper evidence.” And Iverson denied wrongdoing in court filings.

Neither the lab, now located in Charleston, S.C., nor its lawyers would comment.

‘No Cash Left’

In another case, Pharmacogenetics Diagnostic Laboratory LLC in Louisville exited bankruptcy in late October without repaying Medicare $26.3 million for disallowed genetic tests. The lab, set up in 2004 by two University of Louisville professors, strongly disputed Medicare’s findings but said they were the “primary reason” for the bankruptcy, court records show.

Charity Neukomm, a lawyer for the lab, said another medical group agreed to purchase all its assets “free and clear of liens.” That left nothing for the government.

There’s also little chance that Natural Molecular Testing Corp., a defunct genetic testing lab, will repay the $71 million it owes Medicare, according to John Kaplan, an attorney for the bankruptcy trustee.

Kaplan said the lab near Seattle, which opened in 2010, was “printing money from billing Medicare” until the government suspended payments in April 2013. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2013 in the face of a Medicare audit of its billing and concern over its business practices, such as paying some doctors who ordered its tests as much as $10,000 a month in consulting fees, according to court records.

Five years in, the bankruptcy case is expected to settle next year, but there’s likely to be “no cash left” to repay Medicare, Kaplan said.

Critics argue that Medicare has been slow to assess the benefits of new and controversial tests and technologies — even when soaring costs signaled a warning of possible overuse.

Spending on genetic testing, for example, shot up from about $167 million in 2013 to more than $466 million a year later, according to Medicare billing data. In 2015, the program spent about $317 million on the tests and some $165 million last year. Government auditors credit tighter oversight for the sharp decline in billing.

Ellis, the budget watchdog, said the “huge jump” in these bills should have “sent out a red flag.”

Medicare officials don’t routinely verify that the sales claims labs make to doctors are rooted in scientific evidence. Some labs have hawked genetic tests as a tool for making pain management safer. The labs contend the tests can pinpoint the proper drugs and dosage for each patient based on their genetic makeup, thus reducing the threat of overdose or other injury.

However, many experts argue that the science hasn’t caught up to the sales pitch — and that some high-priced tests may do little to diagnose or treat illness.

Genetic tests “are not ready for prime time,” said Charles Argoff, professor of neurology at Albany Medical College in New York. He said their impact on medical care “hasn’t been measured.”

Court records show that the legal battles to recover assets from failed labs often plod on for years, especially when trustees believe labs paid illegal fees or other kickbacks to persuade doctors to order dubious tests.

“Some of these cases never go away,” said David Schumacher, a Boston health care lawyer who has defended doctors against these claims. Still, he said that even after years of legal wrangling Medicare often is unlikely to “be made whole and fully repaid.”

The trustee for Heart Diagnostic Laboratory, which marketed a panel of blood tests to detect heart disease and other illnesses before its June 2015 bankruptcy, has filed more than three dozen lawsuits to recover money paid to doctors and medical offices, including suspect consulting fees.

“Our analysis is that all of these payments were tainted and therefore we’re entitled to go after them,” said Richard Kanowitz. He added: “It’s an uphill battle.”

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

Doctors Soak Up Profits With Urine Drug Tests

By Fred Schulte and Elizabeth Lucas, Kaiser Health News

The cups of urine travel by express mail to the Comprehensive Pain Specialists lab in an industrial park in Brentwood, Tenn., not far from Nashville. Most days bring more than 700 of the little sealed cups from clinics across 10 states, wrapped in red-tagged waste bags. The network treats about 48,000 people each month, and many will be tested for drugs.

Gloved lab techs keep busy inside the cavernous facility, piping smaller urine samples into tubes. First there are tests to detect opiates that patients have been prescribed by CPS doctors. A second set identifies a wide range of drugs, both legal and illegal, in the urine.

The doctors’ orders are displayed on computer screens and tracked by electronic medical records. Test results go back to the clinics in four to five days. The urine ends up stored for a month inside a massive walk-in refrigerator.

The high-tech testing lab’s raw material has become liquid gold for the doctors who own Comprehensive Pain Specialists. This testing process, driven by the nation’s epidemic of painkiller addiction, generates profits across the doctor-owned network of 54 clinics, the largest pain-treatment practice in the Southeast.

kaiser health news (Heidi de Marco)

Medicare paid the company at least $11 million for urine and related tests in 2014, when five of its professionals stood among the nation’s top billers. One nurse practitioner at the company’s clinic in Cleveland, Tenn., single-handedly generated $1.1 million in Medicare billings for urine tests that year, according to Medicare records.

Dr. Peter Kroll, one of the founders of CPS and its medical director, billed Medicare $1.8 million for these drug tests in 2015. He said the costly tests are medically justified to monitor patients on pain pills against risks of addiction or even selling of pills on the black market.

“I have to know the medicine is safe and you’re taking it,” Kroll, 46, said in an interview. Kroll said that several states in which CPS is active have high rates of opioid use, which requires more urine testing.

$8.5 Billion in Urine Tests

Kaiser Health News, with assistance from researchers at the Mayo Clinic, analyzed available billing data from Medicare and private insurance billing nationwide, and found that spending on urine screens and related genetic tests quadrupled from 2011 to 2014 to an estimated $8.5 billion a year — more than the entire budget of the Environmental Protection Agency. The federal government paid providers more to conduct urine drug tests in 2014 than it spent on the four most recommended cancer screenings combined.

Yet there are virtually no national standards regarding who gets tested, for which drugs and how often. Medicare has spent tens of millions of dollars on tests to detect drugs that presented minimal abuse danger for most patients, according to arguments made by government lawyers in court cases that challenge the standing orders to test patients for drugs. Payments have surged for urine tests for street drugs such as cocaine, PCP and ecstasy, which seldom have been detected in tests done on pain patients. In fact, court records show some of those tests showed up positive just 1 percent of the time.

Urine testing has become particularly lucrative for doctors who operate their own labs. In 2014 and 2015, Medicare paid $1 million or more for drug-related tests billed by health professionals at more than 50 pain management practices across the U.S. At a dozen practices, Medicare billings were twice that high.

Thirty-one pain practitioners received 80 percent or more of their Medicare income just from urine testing, which a federal official called a “red flag” that may signal overuse and could lead to a federal investigation.

“We’re focused on the fact that many physicians are making more money on testing than treating patients,” said Jason Mehta, an assistant U.S. attorney in Jacksonville, Fla. “It is troubling to see providers test everyone for every class of drugs every time they come in.”

 ‘Almost a License to Steal’

As alarm spread about opioid deaths and overdoses in the past decade, doctors who prescribed the pills were looking for ways to prevent abuse and avert liability. Entrepreneurs saw a lucrative business model: persuade doctors that testing would keep them out of trouble with licensing boards or law enforcement and protect their patients from harm. Some companies offered doctors technical help opening up their own labs.

A 2011 whistleblower lawsuit against one of the nation’s top billers for urine tests, a San Diego-based laboratory owned by Millennium Health LLC, underscores the potential for profit.

“Doctor,” one lab representative said during sales calls, according to an affidavit, “drug testing is not about medicine but about making money, and I am going to show you how to make a lot of money.”

Millennium Health, billing records show, took in more than $166 million from Medicare in 2014 despite being the target of at least eight whistleblower cases alleging fraud over the past decade. A Millennium sales manager involved in a 2012 case in Massachusetts reported earning $700,000 in salary and sales commissions in the previous year.

Millennium encouraged doctors to order more tests both as a way to lower patients’ risks and to shield the physicians against possible investigations by law enforcement or medical licensing boards, according to court filings. Millennium denied the allegations in the whistleblower suits and settled all of them with the Justice Department in 2015 by agreeing to pay $256 million; its parent company, Millennium Lab Holdings II, declared bankruptcy.

Tests to detect drugs in urine can be basic and cheap. Doctors have long used testing cups with strips that change color when drugs are present. The cups cost less than $10 each, and a strip can detect 10 types of drugs or more at once and display the results in minutes.

Tests to detect drugs in urine can be basic and cheap. Doctors have long used testing cups with strips that change color when drugs are present. The cups cost less than $10 each, and a strip can detect 10 types of drugs or more at once and display the results in minutes.

After noticing that some labs were levying huge charges for these simple urine screens, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services moved in April 2010 to limit these billings. To circumvent the new rules, some doctors scrapped cup testing in favor of specialized — and much costlier — tests performed on machines they installed in their facilities. These machines had one major advantage over the cups: Each test for each drug could be billed individually under Medicare rules.

“It was almost a license to steal. You had such a lucrative possibility, it was very tempting to sell as many [tests] as you can,” said Charles Root, a longtime lab industry consultant whose company, CodeMap, has tracked the rise of testing labs in doctors’ offices.

Voluminous Drug Tests

The CPS testing lab in Tennessee opened in 2013, not long before a pain specialist named William Wagner moved from New Mexico to open a CPS clinic in Anderson, S.C. He was lured by the promise of $30,000 a month in salary, which would grow as the clinic added patients and revenue, along with other benefits. His contract said he could be on-site for as little as 20 percent of the clinic’s operating hours.

When the company recruited him, Wagner said, he was told the job offered “potential to earn a great deal of money” from bonuses he would receive from services he generated, including a share of collections from lab services for urine tests done at the new Tennessee facility.

That did not happen, according to Wagner. He is suing CPS, saying that it failed to collect bills for services he rendered and then closed the clinic. CPS refutes Wagner’s claims and says it fulfilled its obligations under the contract. In a counterclaim, CPS argues that Wagner owes it $190,000.

pain exhibit (Mark collen)

“All of their money was being made off of urine drug screens. They weren’t doing anything else properly,” Wagner said. The lawsuit is pending in federal court in Nashville.

Former CPS chief executive John Davis, in an interview, described the urine-testing lab as part of a “strategic expansion initiative” in which the company invested $6 million to $10 million in computerized equipment and swiftly acquired new clinics. Kroll, one of the owners of CPS, said the idea was to “take the company to the next level.”

Davis, who led the initiative before leaving the company in June, would not discuss the private company’s finances other than to say CPS is profitable and that lab profits “to a great degree” drove the expansion. “Urine screening isn’t the reason why we decided to grow our company. We wanted to help people in need,” Davis said.

Kroll acknowledged that urine tests are profit-makers, but stressed that verifying that patients aren’t abusing drugs gives him a “whole different level of confidence that I’m doing something right for the patients’ condition.”

He said his doctors try to be “judicious” in ordering urine tests. Kroll said some of his doctors and nurses treat “high-risk” patients who require more frequent testing. The company said that its Medicare billing practices, including urine screens, had withstood a “very in-depth” government audit.  The audit initially called for repayment of $25 million but was settled in 2016 for less than $7,000, according to the company. Medicare officials had no comment.

Kroll’s orthopedic career took a sharp turn more than a decade ago after watching his brother suffer through multiple surgeries for muscular dystrophy, along with bone fractures, stiffness and pain. His brother died at age 25, and Kroll decided to switch to anesthesiology and become a pain specialist.

“It sensitized me to the plight of people with chronic conditions that we have no medical answer for,” Kroll said. His brother “battled for his whole life.”

Kroll’s career change coincided with a national movement to establish pain management as a vital medical specialty, with its own accrediting societies and lobbying and political arm to advance its interests and those of patients.

Joined by three other doctors, he formed Comprehensive Pain Specialists at a storefront in suburban Hendersonville, Tenn. It quickly gained a foothold on referrals from local doctors unsure, or uneasy, about treating unyielding pain with heavy narcotics such as oxycodone, morphine and methadone.

In 2014, when CPS was among Medicare’s major urine-test billers, Tennessee led the nation in Medicare spending on urine drug tests run by doctors with in-house labs, according to federal billing records.

How Much Is Too Much?

There is wide disagreement among legislators, medical trade associations and the state boards that license doctors over the best approach to urine testing. One association of pain specialists argued in 2008 that urine testing could be done as often as weekly, while others have balked at that frequency.

Indiana’s medical board ordered mandatory urine tests for all pain patients in late 2013, only to face a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union, which argued that the policy was unconstitutional and an unlawful search. Officials backed down the next year, and current policy states that testing can be done “at any time the physician determines that it is medically necessary.”

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, wary of both cost and privacy concerns, declined to set a definitive national standard despite years of debate. In long-awaited guidelines issued in March 2016, the CDC called for testing at the start of opioid therapy and once a year for long-term users. Beyond that, it said, testing should be “left up to the discretion” of the medical professional.

There is likewise little scientific justification for many of these new types of drug testing that have made their way onto doctors’ order sheets and laboratory menus.

Many pain patients on opioids are routinely tested for phencyclidine, an illegal, hallucinogenic drug also known as PCP, or angel dust, Medicare records show. Yet urine tests have rarely detected the drug. Millennium, the San Diego-based company that once topped Medicare billings for urine tests, found PCP in fewer than 1 percent of all patient samples, according to federal court filings.

In a tour of the CPS lab, Chief Operations Officer Jeff Hurst, who has more than two decades of experience working for commercial labs, rattled off a list of drugs ranging from cocaine to heroin and methamphetamine, which he said was “really big in East Tennessee.”

How often urine tests reveal serious drug abuse — or suggest patients might be selling some of their medications instead of taking them — is tough to pin down. Asked during a tour of the laboratory in Tennessee if CPS could provide such data, Hurst said he did not have it; Kroll said he didn’t either.

Hurst said the lab often ends up doing a “long list of tests” because CPS doctors are prescribing dangerous drugs that may be deadly if abused and “need to know what patients are taking.” Prescribed drugs, such as opiates and tranquilizers, are also measured at the CPS lab.

Government officials have criticized the explosive growth in testing for some prescription drugs, notably a class of tranquilizers known as tricyclic antidepressants. Medicare paid more than $45 million in 2014 for more than 200,000 people to be tested for tricyclic drugs, often multiple times. Medicare was billed for 644,495 tests for one tricyclic drug, amitriptyline, up from 6,173 tests five years earlier.

The Department of Justice argued in a 2012 whistleblower case that these tests often couldn’t be justified because of “low abuse potential” of the drugs and a “lack of abuse history for the vast majority of patients.”

Income Breakdown Raises ‘Red Flag’

When told that drug screens accounted for most of the Medicare income for dozens of pain doctors, federal officials said that was troubling.

“Doctors who receive the lion’s share of their Medicare funds from urine drug testing would certainly raise a red flag,” said Donald White, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Inspector General. “Confirmation of fraud would require federal investigation and a formal judicial proceeding.”

In a report released last fall, the watchdog office said some uptick in testing might be justified by the drug abuse epidemic, but noted that the situation also “could provide cover for labs that might seek to fraudulently bill Medicare for unnecessary drug testing.”

Medicare pays only for services it considers “medically necessary.” While that sometimes can be a judgment call, pain clinics that adopt a “one-size-fits-all” approach to urine testing may find themselves under suspicion, said Mehta, the assistant U.S. attorney in Florida.

Mehta’s office investigated a network of Florida clinics called Coastal Spine & Pain Center for alleged over-testing, including routinely billing for a second round of expensive tests simply to confirm earlier findings. In a press release in August 2016, the government argued that these tests were “medically unnecessary.” The company paid $7.4 million last year to settle the False Claims Act case. Coastal Spine & Pain, which did not admit fault, had no comment.

Four Coastal Spine & Pain doctors were among the top 50 Medicare billers during 2014, when they charged nearly $6 million for drug tests, according to Medicare billing data analyzed by KHN.

Starting in 2016, Medicare began to crack down on urine billings as part of a federal law that is supposed to reset lab fees for the first time in three decades. Now tougher scrutiny of urine testing, and cuts in reimbursements, may be threatening CPS — or at least its profits.

CPS closed nine clinics last year and told its doctors that urine-testing revenue had dropped off 32 percent in the first quarter of the year, according to a letter then-CEO Davis sent its physician partners.

Davis said the company had to “make some changes” because of cuts in Medicare reimbursements for urine tests and other medical services. A company spokeswoman told KHN that the drop in urine revenue worsened through 2016 but has bounced back somewhat this year.

Despite the cuts, privately held CPS plans to open new clinics this year. Urine testing will remain a key service — for keeping patients safe, it said. CPS is just playing by the rules of the game. “Tell us how often to test,” said Hurst, the operations officer, “and we’ll be happy to follow it.”

Kaiser Health News is national health policy news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

Feds Say Bankrupt Drug Lab Paid Millions in Kickbacks

By Pat Anson, Editor

A bankrupt drug testing lab with a checkered history has been linked to a large money laundering and pill mill operation in Tennessee.

According to an updated indictment in U.S. District Court in Knoxville, Confirmatrix Laboratory in Georgia and Sterling Laboratories in Seattle paid nearly $3 million in illegal kickbacks to have thousands of urine drug test samples sent to them from patients at the Knoxville Hope Clinic (KHC). In return, the labs submitted false claims for "unnecessary" drug tests to Medicare and TennCare, Tennesee’s Medicaid program.

“Confirmatrix, by and through its principals and agents, paid bribes and kickbacks to defendants Clyde Christopher Tipton and Maynard Alvarez in return for causing Medicare and TennCare beneficiaries from KHC to be referred to Confirmatrix for medically unnecessary drug screenings,” the indictment alleges.

“Medical providers at KHC prescribed opioids and other controlled substances to thousands of purported pain patients in exchange for grossly excessive fees. The vast majority of the prescriptions were unreasonable and medically unnecessary. Patients were required to keep follow-up appointments every 28 days to continue receiving their prescriptions. Providers at KHC ordered medically unnecessary Drug Screenings for every patient every 28 days.”

Tipton, Alvarez and six other defendants are accused of drug trafficking and money laundering in the long-running investigation of Tennessee pill mills. The ringleader of the pill mill scheme, a 53-year old grandmother named Sylvia Hofstetter, allegedly made millions of dollars while running clinics that prescribed 12 million opioid prescriptions. Prosecutors have alleged that at least nine patients at the clinics died from drug overdoses.

No one affiliated with Confirmatrix or Sterling Laboratories has been indicted so far in the case. Prosecutors say the   alleged kickbacks were paid from August 2013 to July 2016.

As PNN has reported, Confirmatrix filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last November, just two days after its headquarters near Atlanta was raided by FBI agents.  The company was founded by Khalid Satary, a convicted felon and Palestinian national that the federal government has been trying to deport for years.

A 2013 study by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) listed Confirmatrix as the most expensive drug lab in the country, collecting an average of $2,406 from Medicare for each patient tested, compared to the national average of $751. The bills from Confirmatrix were high because the company ran an average of nearly 120 different drug screens on each patient, far more than any other drug lab.

These and other abusive billing practices finally caused Medicare to lower its reimbursement rates for drug testing, which led to Confirmatrix’s financial problems.

Although it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy nine months ago, Confirmatrix remains in business and continues to bill patients and insurance companies for costly drug screens.

Some current and former patients at the Benefis Pain Management Center, a pain clinic in Great Falls, Montana, have received bills from a collection agency seeking well over $1,000 for drug screens that normally cost a few hundred dollars.

“Confirmatrix is out of network, hence I am stuck with the bill unless Benefis writes it off,” one patient told PNN. “I spoke to my insurance about it and they told me that there are labs in Montana that could have done the same thing and would have been covered by my insurance. She asked me, why they would go to a Georgia lab?”

In a statement to PNN in May, a Benefis official defended the clinic’s continued use of Confirmatrix, saying the company performs a valuable service and “waives many costs.”

“The company we have partnered with has an extensive patient assistance program, which is part of the reason they were selected. That company was selected two years ago because it was one of the few labs nationwide that offered quantitative and qualitative testing AND patient assistant programs,” said Kathy Hill, Chief Operating Officer at Benefis Medical Group.

Confirmatrix’s laboratory, office and warehouse space were recently put up for auction by the bankruptcy court under sealed bid.

New Drug Testing Guideline Warns Against Fraud

By Pat Anson, Editor

A new guideline on the use of drug testing by the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) warns against expensive and unnecessary tests that have led to “unethical and/or fraudulent activities.”

The ASAM is a professional society that represents over 4,300 physicians and specialists in addiction treatment. Its new guideline – the first attempt to set national standards for clinical drug testing – could also influence primary care providers and pain management specialists who are increasingly testing their patients for opioid misuse.  

"Drug testing is a valuable tool for supporting patients in addiction treatment, and this comprehensive set of recommendations should prove useful to providers in a variety of addiction treatment settings," said Margaret Jarvis, MD, Chair of ASAM's Quality Improvement Council.

The new guideline, developed by an 11-member expert panel, is published in the Journal of Addiction Medicine.

“ASAM is acutely aware that this document will be released in a context where a lack of clarity about the appropriate use of drug testing has led not only to inconsistent clinical practice, but also unethical and/or fraudulent activities,” the guideline says.

“One of the purposes of this document is to clarify appropriate clinical use of drug testing and, in so doing, shine a light on drug-testing practices that are clearly outside of these boundaries. The delineation of appropriate treatment practices will confer multiple benefits; most importantly, it will improve patient care. At the same time, it will reduce waste and fraud.”

Drug testing has grown into a multi-billion dollar industry – what some call “liquid gold” – largely because so many doctors who treat addicts and chronic pain patients require them to submit to urine drug screens. Many experts consider the “point-of-care” immunoassay tests widely used in doctors’ offices unreliable because they often give false negative or false positive results.

Several drug testing laboratories have also paid heavy fines to settle fraud and kickback charges after they bilked Medicare, Medicaid, private insurers, and patients for unnecessary and expensive lab tests. The practice was so egregious that the Department of Health and Human Services issued a Special Fraud Alert in 2014 to warn physicians not to accept any payments, referrals, rent or reimbursements from drug testing companies.

The new ASAM guidelines say drug tests "should be widely used in addiction treatment settings," but warn that negative or positive findings about a patient’s use of drugs do not necessarily mean they have a substance use disorder. A patient who consumes poppy seeds, for example, could have a positive finding for morphine.

“The list of potential sources of false positives is too extensive to list here, but a few noted examples include; cough suppressants resulting in positive opioid results, ephedrine in cold medicine resulting in positive result for amphetamines, and antidepressants resulting in positive opioid results,” the guideline says.

“There are known limitations to urine immunoassays for opiate use and providers should be cautious when interpreting their results. Providers should carefully review the testing report produced by the laboratory to ensure they understand which opiates and opioids a test is capable of detecting.”

The ASAM’s expert panel said there was no “magic formula” to determine how often a patient should be drug tested. Testing should be done at least weekly at the beginning of addiction treatment, according to the guideline, and at least monthly in patients in stable recovery. Testing should be performed on a random schedule, when possible.

The guideline also cautions physicians not to be confrontational with patients if a test has an unexpected finding.

“Drug testing should function as a therapeutic tool, so a provider's response to test results should not be confrontational. This approach can perpetuate an ‘us versus them’ mentality that reduces the effectiveness of drug testing to support recovery,” the guideline says.

The ASAM guideline also advises physicians on other issues such as urine tampering, patient confidentiality, practitioner education, and how to select reliable tests and laboratories.

Montana Urine Tests Sent to Bankrupt Drug Lab

By Pat Anson, Editor

Imagine getting an unexpected medical bill for over $1,500 that your insurance won’t cover. You can’t afford to pay it, have already missed several weeks of work due to chronic back pain, and you’re worried about losing your job.

That’s the dilemma faced by a Montana woman, one of the patients at a Great Falls pain clinic who are getting unusually large bills for urine drug testing at a laboratory over 2,000 miles away in Georgia. 

“I spoke to my insurance about it and they told me that there are labs in Montana that could have done the same thing and would have been covered by my insurance. She asked me, why they would go to a Georgia lab?” said the patient, who asked that we not reveal her identity.

The lab in question is Confirmatrix Laboratory, a financially troubled company near Atlanta that specializes in urine drug testing.

For the last two years, Confirmatrix has conducted drug screens for the Benefis Pain Management Center, which is part of Benefis Health System, a non-profit community-based health organization that operates a hospital and provides other medical services in Great Falls.

As PNN has reported, some current and former patients at the Benefis pain clinic believe they are being unfairly labeled and treated as addicts. Many are having their opioid doses reduced or stopped completely. All are required to take regular drug tests to prove they’re not abusing their pain medication.

“For the safety of our patients, regular urine drug screens are conducted to ensure the appropriate levels of prescribed medications, and only those medications, are present,” says Katrina Lewis, MD, a pain management specialist at Benefis.  “Presence of too high of a level of opioids or other substances in the urine can make it inappropriate and unsafe to continue prescribing opioids.  Presence of none of the prescribed opioids in the urine indicates the care plan is not being followed and further prescribing is medically unnecessary.”

Urine drug testing is not uncommon at pain clinics, but the selection of Confirmatrix is. The company was founded by Khalid Satary, a convicted felon and Palestinian national that the federal government has been trying to deport for years.

Satary was arrested in 2001 and served more than three years in federal prison after pleading guilty to running a counterfeit CD operation in the Atlanta area valued at $50 million. At the time, it was the largest counterfeit music case in U.S. history, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

Khalid and jordan satary (instagram photo)

Shortly after his release from prison, Satary founded Confirmatrix, Nue Medical Consulting and GNOS Medical, a medical billing firm, and then transferred his interests in the companies over to his son Jordan, a recent high school graduate.

The Journal Constitution reported in 2014 that Satary was subject to a federal deportation order, but immigration officials were unable to find a country willing to accept him. He still apparently lives in the U.S.

On November 2nd of last year, the FBI and the Georgia Department of Health and Human Services served search warrants at Confirmatrix and GNOS Medical, and agents removed documents from both facilities.

The agencies have not said what prompted the raids and no charges have been filed against either company.

Just two days after the search warrants were served, Confirmatrix filed for Chapter 11 federal bankruptcy protection, with Satary’s son Jordan the largest shareholder to sign the petition in the Northern District Court of Georgia. GNOS Medical is listed as one of the creditors that Confirmatrix owes money to.

“Although historically very profitable,” Confirmatrix CEO Ann Durham told the court the company “began experiencing financial troubles when recent changes to Medicare’s reimbursement rates resulted in a decrease (in) revenue from its toxicology business.”

Drug testing has indeed been a very profitable business for Confirmatrix and other drug labs. A 2013 study by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) listed Confirmatrix as the most expensive drug lab in the country, collecting an average of $2,406 from Medicare for each patient tested, compared to the national average of $751. The bills from Confirmatrix were high because the company ran an average of nearly 120 different drug screens on each patient, far more than any other drug lab.

These and other abusive billing practices, not only by Confirmatrix but other drug labs such as Millennium Health, finally caused Medicare to lower its reimbursement rates for drug testing.

Millennium filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2015, soon after paying a $256 million dollar fine to settle fraud and kickback charges, and to reimburse the government for unnecessary urine and genetic tests.

Under its Chapter 11 filing, Confirmatrix is still able to conduct business and perform lab tests, but it is exploring options for a possible sale of the company or a restructuring “to focus its operations on the blood testing business.” 

The company said it has 152 employees in 15 different states, including one employee in Montana who apparently works at the Benefis pain clinic in Great Falls.

“They had a gal who was there every day, I assume working there full time, and she was responsible for collecting the samples, processing them, and shipping them off to the lab,” said Rodney Lutes, a physician assistant who was discharged by Benefis in March. 

Benefis did not respond to inquiries from PNN about whether a Confirmatrix employee works at the pain clinic or if Benefis receives a commission or compensation from Confirmatrix for doing business with the company. According to clinic policy, patients on high doses of opioids "should have a minimum of one urine drug test every two months."

In a statement, a Benefis official said Confirmatrix performs a valuable service and “waives many costs.”

“The company we have partnered with has an extensive patient assistance program, which is part of the reason they were selected. That company was selected two years ago because it was one of the few labs nationwide that offered quantitative and qualitative testing AND patient assistant programs. This company does not send its patients to collections for an inability to pay a bill,” said Kathy Hill, Chief Operating Officer at Benefis Medical Group.

But some Benefis patients are getting letters from collection agencies demanding payment for Confirmatrix drug screens that cost well over $1,000, the same tests that Medicare is charged about $150 for under its new reimbursement rates. A call to Confirmatrix for comment was not returned.

Other patients say they are getting bills for drug tests they’ve already paid for, and that Benefis has lost some of their billing and medical records. Still other patients are surprised to learn they may be legally responsible for drug tests that their insurance company refused to pay for.  

“Confirmatrix is out of network, hence I am stuck with the bill unless Benefis writes it off,” said one woman, a chronic pain sufferer for over 30 years, whose opioid dose was recently reduced substantially. “In the last 6 weeks I have been dropped to one third of the dosage I was on with intentions that I will be dropped even more. I have no desire to live, because this is not living.”

In April, a suicidal patient at Benefis Health System burned down his doctor's home and killed himself during a standoff with police. David Herron was not a patient at the Benefis pain clinic, but suffered from chronic back pain and apparently had a long-standing grievance with his doctor, an orthopedic surgeon.

The incident prompted Benefis to upgrade security procedures at its facilities, including training employees to handle active shooter situations, according to the Great Falls Tribune, which reported that "danger presents itself in the form of patients who are drug addicted looking for an early prescription."

Study Depicts Half of Americans as Rx Abusers

 By Pat Anson, Editor

Over half of Americans “misused” their prescription drugs last year, according to a new report by a drug testing company that appears to draw several broad and misleading conclusions about the use of opioid pain medication.

Quest Diagnostics analyzed drug testing data from over 3 million patients and found that 54% had some type of prescription drug misuse in 2015 – down from 63% in 2011.

"The key takeaway from this massive, nationally representative analysis is that despite some gains, a large number of patients use prescription drugs inappropriately and even dangerously," said co-researcher Harvey W. Kaufman, MD, senior medical director for Quest Diagnostics.

"The CDC's recent recommendations to physicians to carefully weigh the risks and benefits of opioid drug therapy are a step in the right direction, but clearly more needs to be done to address this public health crisis."

The term “misuse” should be taken with a grain of salt, because it does not mean patients were abusing or addicted to prescription drugs – only that they did not take them as directed.

In 2015, for example, the study found that over half (55%) of the patients who had “inconsistent” test results did not have a prescribed drug in their system – meaning they no longer felt a need to take a medication, didn’t like the drug’s side effects, forgot to take it, or simply couldn’t afford it. It could also mean the drug was ineffective. the wrong drug was prescribed or the doctor made an incorrect diagnosis. There are literally dozens of reasons someone could stop taking a drug.

But patients who had no drugs detected – legal or illegal – were still classified in the “misuse" category.

Nevertheless, while acknowledging there were “methodology limitations” to the study, Quest made some sweeping conclusions about it in a press release, claiming that “the majority of American adults taking opioids and other commonly prescribed medications use them in ways that put their health at risk.”

But according to the study, opioids were not the most commonly misused class of medication. Depending on the age of the patient, that distinction went to amphetamines, benzodiazepines and marijuana. Opiates were the second most likely class of drugs to be misused by adults – but again that includes many patients who did not take opioids that were prescribed or had no drugs at all in their system.

This way of slicing the data has long been used by drug testing companies to make the abuse of opioids appear worse than it is and to justify more testing.

A similar study by Ameritox in 2012 found that nearly a third of older patients did not have a prescribed opioid detected in their urine -- and that was also considered misuse.

“This population has a risk of medication misuse and illicit drug use that warrants attention,” said Harry Leider, MD, who was then Chief Medical Officer of Ameritox. “This data provides a compelling rationale for routinely monitoring medication use in older patients on chronic opioids.”

Ameritox sponsored a study that same year claiming that patients should be drug tested at least four times annually if a doctor believes they are at risk misusing opioids.  The study was approved even though “there currently is a limited evidence base to support the expert panel’s recommendations.”

Guidelines adopted by the CDC earlier this year were also based on weak evidence. They recommend that physicians should use urine drug testing before starting opioid therapy and should re-test patients at least once annually.

As Pain News Network has reported, “point-of-care” urine drug tests that are widely used in doctors’ offices are wrong about half the time – frequently giving false positive or false negative results for drugs like marijuana, oxycodone and methadone.

According to one estimate, drug testing has grown into a lucrative $4 billion dollar a year industry -- “liquid gold” as some have called it – that is projected to reach $6.3 billion by 2019. The competition between drug screening labs is intense and several companies have been fined by the federal government for giving illegal kickbacks to physicians. Last year, Millennium Health agreed to pay $256 million to the federal government to settle fraud and kickback charges. The company later filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Drug Tests Scare Off Some Chronic Pain Patients

By Pat Anson, Editor

Urine drug testing has become standard protocol for many patients who are prescribed opioid pain medication. But a new study suggests the practice may be counterproductive, because it increases the odds a patient won’t come back for further treatment.

In a study involving 723 chronic pain patients being treated at a pain clinic, researchers at the University of Houston and the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston found that nearly a quarter (23.75%) who were given a urine drug screen on their first visit failed to show up for the next appointment. 

The odds were even higher for those who tested positive for an illicit drug, but the “no show” trend also applied to patients whose drug tests were negative.

“Even those who tested negative for illicit substances in the UDS (urine drug screen) were more likely to be no-shows compared to those who did not get tested. This raises concerns that the UDS administered early in the doctor-patient relationship might have an inadvertent impact on injuring patient expectations of trust,” the researchers reported in the journal Pain Physician.

Only about 10% of those who weren’t tested skipped their follow-up appointment.

“It is a balancing act,” said Partha Krishnamurthy, director of the Institute for Health Care Marketing at the University of Houston’s Bauer College of Business. “On one hand, concerns about patient safety and public health necessitate the monitoring of patients on opioid medications. On the other hand, aggressive monitoring may interfere with the therapeutic alliance.”

Routine use of urine drug tests is one of the main recommendations in the CDC’s draft guidance for opioid prescribing, which calls for primary care physicians to “use urine drug testing before starting opioid therapy and consider urine drug testing at least annually.”

The scientific research behind that recommendation is considered weak, as is much of the evidence that standard “point of care” urine drug tests are reliable or accurate.

“I've only been saying that UDT (urine drug tests) harms patients and the patient/provider relationship for the past seven years and not a single physician, researcher, or healthcare provider of any kind supported my position.  I guess common sense wasn't enough but now we have evidence,” said Mark Collen, an independent scholar and patient advocate. 

“As I've stated previously in regards to UDT, the entire pain community will end up on the wrong side of history and it looks like that's beginning to occur.”     

Researchers say one possible solution to the high-rate of patient “no shows” is for doctors to delay drug screening of new patients until they’ve had a chance to develop rapport and trust with them.

“Not testing is not an option,” the researchers said, while at the same time warning that routine testing may only make prescription drug abuse worse.

“If the patients are disengaging from the clinic, where are they going? Is the illicit market place their next stop? Thus, while UDS may induce the problematic patients to go away from the clinic, the problem of opioid misuse may continue to persist.”

The CDC and Profit Driven Drug Testing

(Editor’s Note: As part of its draft opioid prescribing guidelines, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that physicians “use urine drug testing before starting opioid therapy and consider urine drug testing at least annually to assess for prescribed medications as well as other controlled prescription drugs and illicit drugs.”  Mark Collen is an expert in this field and has submitted the following to the CDC.)

By Mark Collen, Guest Columnist

There are a number of conflating factors which have led to the CDC‘s recommendation for urine drug testing (UDT) in pain management -- none of which have to do with quality patient care. These include the federal government‘s complicity in the overprescribing of drugs, the unethical marketing of OxyContin by Purdue Pharma, the profit motive which drove drug testing patients in pain, and physicians‘ fears and inability to effectively treat pain.

We live in a drug addled society with Americans consuming record amounts of prescription drugs, including opioids. In other words, American healthcare providers are exceptional at writing prescriptions. Someone needs to tell them to, “Just say no.”

The pharmaceutical industry‘s direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) has driven demand for drugs and has contributed to the escalating cost of prescription medications. Both Congress and the FDA are largely responsible for this overprescribing public health issue since they have allowed DTCA to exist and spread.

What has not been investigated is the influence the incessant drug ads have had on the American culture and more importantly, the American psyche in terms of one‘s views on drug use, prescription or otherwise. Almasi and colleagues write, “DTCA pushes a ‘Brave New World‘  where if anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there‘s always [the sedative] soma to give you a holiday from the facts.” DTCA may influence the abuse of opioids and other drugs.

The pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma was responsible for one of the most deceptive marketing campaigns in history with their medication OxyContin, a timed-release oxycodone. Art Van Zee writes, “A consistent feature in the promotion and marketing of OxyContin was a systematic effort to minimize the risk of addiction in the use of opioids for the treatment of chronic non–cancer-related pain.” As a result, OxyContin became the poster boy for prescription drug abuse and Purdue was fined $600 million to settle criminal complaints. That has had little impact on the Sackler family, Purdue‘s owners, with Forbes estimating their worth at $14 billion.

Although Purdue is not completely responsible for the current opioid abuse epidemic, they certainly have played a meaningful role. In addition, a congressional investigation suggested that the pharmaceutical industry has promoted opioid sales through a number of organizations including the American Pain Society and the American Academy of Pain Medicine, both of which write treatment guidelines. 

As opioid abuse and overdose deaths began to rise, so did the drug testing industry within pain management. Drug testing labs used a similar strategy as the pharmaceutical industry in promoting their wares and money was used as an incentive to drug test. 

In my 2012 article entitled, “Profit-Driven Drug Testing,” I presented Medicare data which showed a meteoric rise in drug testing:

“A deeper examination finds that between 2000 and 2009, the total number of CLIA-waived drug tests paid for by Medicare and conducted at physicians‘ offices increased approximately 3,172,910%; with 101 tests conducted in 2000 and 3,204,740 in 2009. Furthermore, during that same time period and within the specialty of anesthesiology, CLIA-waived drug tests increased 63,687,900%.”

The annual cost of drug testing in pain management is estimated at $2 billion per year. Unfortunately, that may be a gross underestimate since no study has ever evaluated the indirect costs of patient harm or harming the therapeutic patient-provider relationship—likely the most important aspect of pain management. A November, 2014 article in the Wall Street Journal reported that some physicians are making more money from drug testing patients than treating them.

Not unlike big pharma, there appears to be a dearth of integrity in the drug testing industry. Millennium Health, the largest drug tester in pain management, was recently fined $256 million by the U.S. Department of Justice and then filed for bankruptcy. This led to the discovery that the founders took $1.3 billion out of the business in 2014.

Ameritox, the second largest drug tester, actually paid physicians to drug test their patients, and as a result was fined $16.3 million by the Justice Department. Calloway Laboratories is yet another drug testing lab that was prosecuted and it is going out of business.

This author asked Debra Maul, a whistleblower in the laboratory industry, for her comment on UDT in pain management for this paper. Debra wrote, “Personally, I believe it‘s all about the money. When I entered the laboratory business in 2003, it was very difficult to get physicians to test their patients. In 2007, when Millennium entered the industry with the POCT (point of care tests) business model, pain doctors significantly increased their patient testing, I believe, because they could make money on in-office testing. New labs were popping up everywhere promoting this business model.”

She continued, “If you look at the information the WSJ obtained from CMS regarding Medicare reimbursements for UDT, reimbursements for simple UDTs grew significantly from 2007 until reimbursements were cut in 2010. Then in 2011 and 2012, high tech drug testing took a big jump, I believe, due to laboratories promoting in-office analyzers and other high-tech testing equipment to doctors, so they could continue billing for UDTs. It will be interesting to see what happens with in-office testing and the entire UDT market, with the significantly reduced reimbursements this year.”

What follows is a list of drug testing labs and the amount they were reimbursed by Medicare for urine drug testing in 2012. These numbers come from Medicare‘s website and were provided by Debra Maul:

• Millennium: $109,031,768
• Ameritox: $99,553,258
• Aegis: $36,140,368
• Alere: $16,937,116
• AIT: $13,845,880
• Dominion: $12,551,313
• Calloway: $6,918,972

To complicate matters, healthcare providers do a poor job at treating chronic pain and opioids may not be the best choice for the long-term treatment of chronic, non-acute, non-malignant pain. Moreover, insurers have been known to reimburse for pain medication and not physical therapy. It is likely that a number of clinicians prescribe opioids because they don‘t know what else to do, and then perform random drug tests in hopes of mitigating any damage they may cause, but it does not work. There is a great need to develop and test cost effective, alternative interventions to pharmacotherapy for the treatment of chronic pain and illness in the primary care setting.

The overriding factor in this historical perspective is the consistent and negative impact industry has on medicine and in this case, pain medicine. A good example of how close the drug testing industry gets to individuals who write guidelines, please go to this link and note the presenter is the lead author of the CDC guideline (Dr. Deborah Dowell) and a conference sponsor is a drug testing lab (Ameritox). 

There is no question that industry has a negative influence on medicine. Stamatakis and colleagues write, “The industry has created means to intervene in all steps of the processes that influence healthcare research, strategy, expenditure and practice. These include evidence base production, evidence synthesis, understanding of harms issues, cost-effectiveness evaluation, clinical guidelines formation, healthcare professional education and direct influences on healthcare professional decisions.”

Urine drug testing in pain management costs an estimated $2 billion per year and there is no proof of efficacy. Moreover, it may cause patient harm and harm to the patient-provider relationship and thus increase healthcare costs even further. 

The desire for profits likely started and maintains UDT in pain management along with fear. Fear of prosecution has been attributed to the proliferation of drug testing by doctors treating chronic pain. Goldberg and Rich write, “This singular focus strongly suggests purposes beyond ensuring quality patient care, such as fear of regulatory scrutiny and potential legal liability.”

The CDC has turned a blind eye to a number of important issues regarding UDT in pain management, including its constitutionality and the fact that it was likely driven by profits. Group think can negatively influence treatment guidelines and that is likely to blame for the CDC urine drug test recommendation. Giving a person with pain a “choice” to either submit to a drug test or not receive pain medication is really the option to either submit to a search or suffer, and that is coercion. It exemplifies patriarchal medicine at its worst and is the antithesis of patient-centered care. 

James L. Madara, MD, CEO of the American Medical Association, was quoted as saying about the CDC guideline, "The guidelines and supporting discussion are devoid of a patient-centered view and any real acknowledgment or empathy of the problems chronic pain patients may face."

The CDC should not recommend UDT as part of the current guideline since there is no proof of efficacy, it may be unconstitutional, and was likely driven by profits and nurtured through fear. Furthermore, it is very expensive and may cause harm to the patient and patient-provider.

Mark Collen is an independent scholar and patient advocate. He serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Pain & Palliative Care Pharmacotherapy, and has peer reviewed manuscripts for journals including The Patient: Patient-Centered Outcomes Research, The American Journal of Pharmacy Benefits, and The Clinical Journal of Pain. 

Mark is also the founder of PainExhibit.org, an online art exhibit from artists with chronic pain, which seeks to educate healthcare providers and the public about chronic pain through art, and to give a voice to the many who suffer in silence.

This column is an abbreviated version of the comment Mark has submitted to the CDC. The full version of Mark’s comment can be read here.

The information in this column should not be considered as professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. It is for informational purposes only and represents the author’s opinions alone. It does not inherently express or reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of Pain News Network.

Millennium Wins FDA Contract Despite Fraud Charges

By Pat Anson, Editor

Just days after agreeing to pay $256 million to the federal government to settle fraud and kickback charges, Millennium Health has been selected to provide urine drug tests to the Food and Drug Administration for a clinical trial.

The trial will assess the development of opioid tolerance in patients taking pain medication with an abuse deterrent formula. Millennium could potentially make $1.6 million under the FDA contract.

"Long term opioid treatment can produce positive outcomes when prescribed and used appropriately, but they also carry risks that must be managed. UDT (urine drug testing) plays a critical role in aiding the clinician in evaluating patient safety. Millennium's selection as a service partner in this important initiative reflects our advanced technical and analytic capabilities and commitment to excellence," said Millennium CEO Brock Hardaway.

Millennium -- the nation’s largest drug testing company -- won the contract soon after it agreed to settle fraud charges under the Federal False Claims Act. Millennium was accused of bilking Medicare, Medicaid and other federal health care programs for a large number of medically unnecessary urine drug and genetic tests. The San Diego based firm was also accused of violating federal kickback laws by providing physicians with free urine “point of care” (POC) test cups if they referred more expensive laboratory testing to Millennium.  

“Millennium allegedly promoted indiscriminate and unnecessary testing that increased medical costs without serving patients’ real medical needs,” said U.S. Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz of the District of Massachusetts.  “A laboratory that promotes and knowingly conducts medically unnecessary drug testing operates unlawfully and squanders our precious federal health care resources.”

Under terms of its settlement with the Department of Justice (DOJ), Millennium will pay $237 million to settle claims for unnecessary urine and genetic tests. Millennium also entered into a corporate integrity agreement with the Department of Health and Human Services, and will pay $19.2 million to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to resolve issues over its billing practices. The government, in turn, will pay whistleblowers over $30 million for their help in building the case against Millennium.

“Millennium used a variety of schemes to cause physicians, including many of its biggest referrers, to routinely order excessive amounts of UDT (urine drug tests) for all patients (including Medicare and Medicaid patients) regardless of individual patient assessment or need. Millennium’s abusive practices included the use of physician standing order forms to encourage routine, excessive UDT, and the dissemination of false and misleading statements about drug abuse rates and the value of its testing,” the original government complaint said.

"While Millennium may debate some of the merits of the DOJ's allegations, we respect the government's role in health care oversight and enforcement,” said Millennium's Hardaway. “At the end of the day, it was time to bring closure to an investigation that began nearly four years ago. Millennium Health is currently a very different organization than we were in the past. We fully embrace our obligation to both commercial and publicly funded health plans to provide value to the health care system overall and ensure that doctors who order our testing solutions adequately demonstrate that those solutions are clinically necessary.”

After the settlement was reached, Moody's Investors Service downgraded Millennium's Health's corporate debt rating and said its rating outlook was negative.

"The downgrade reflects Moody's expectation that Millennium will complete a distressed debt exchange or file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the near term. Moody's is estimating that lenders will suffer material losses in the event of a default," Moody's said in a statement.

Millennium is not the first drug testing company to face fraud and kickback charges. Competitors Amertiox, Calloway Labs, Quest Diagnostics, and LabCorp have all faced similar charges and paid millions of dollars in fines.As a result of these cases, Medicare has proposed lowering its billing rates for diagnostic testing as early as 2016, moving to a flat-rate fee structure to prevent drug-testing companies from charging more by testing for more substances.

As Pain News Network has reported, urine drug testing grew into a lucrative $4 billion industry – what some call “liquid gold” – largely because so many doctors who treat addicts and chronic pain patients require them to submit to urine drug screens. In many cases, point-of-care tests are used, even though many experts consider them unreliable.

Pain Meds Top Concern of Work Comp Industry

By Pat Anson, Editor

The use of opioid pain medication is the number one issue faced by the worker’s compensation industry, according to a new survey that calls the long-term use of opioids in the U.S. an “extremely significant problem” for insurers and employers.

The annual survey of nearly two dozen insurers, state worker compensation agencies and self-insured employers was conducted by CompPharma, a consortium of pharmacy benefit managers that helps members develop procedures to control work comp costs.

The survey found that drug spending by the worker compensation industry increased by 6.4% last year, the first increase since 2009. Pharmacy spending in work comp cases was estimated at between $5 and $7 billion in 2014.

“During the past several years long-term opioid use has become the single biggest concern identified by respondents. While program managers and work comp executives have long known about the relatively high usage of narcotics in work comp, the depth and breadth of understanding of the issue continues to increase. Throughout the survey, respondents mentioned narcotics, opioids, addiction, specific drugs, dependency, and related terms, even when responding to other questions,” CompPharma said in a report on the survey.

Asked to rate the severity of the opioid problem on a scale of one to five, respondents gave it an average ranking of 4.75, which was called “a clear indicator of the level of the industry’s anxiety over a problem that it was somewhat slow to fully grasp.”

Payers also expressed concern about the cost of new opioids and abuse deterrent opioids, which are formulated to make it more difficult for the drugs to be snorted or injected.

“They say follow the money well here you go,” said Lynn Webster, MD, past president of the American Academy of Pain Medicine. “If patient well-being and safety were the concern of payers they would rapidly adopt abuse deterrent formulations and lobby Congress to find safer and more effective therapies.  Neither are occurring.”

Webster said the cost of opioids was the “genesis for the anti-opioid movement” and claimed the work comp industry was fueling efforts to limit opioid prescribing.

“We need to ask why cost to payers trumps patients reporting effectiveness,” Webster said in an email to Pain News Network.  “There should be a Senate investigation to see if this has been an orchestrated attack.  If so it should be criminal.” 

Payers who were surveyed said they had developed a variety of ways to limit the cost of opioids or make them harder to get.

“Respondents noted several approaches to controlling cost, with a more diverse range of solutions and more specificity in solutions than we’ve previously seen. The majority of the respondents implemented programs, upgraded approaches, hired staff, or altered DUR (drug utilization review) processes pertaining to opioids. This shows how seriously these respondents take the issue,” the report states.

Payers were also concerned about physicians dispensing opioid pain medications out of their own offices, which often cost more than opioids obtained at a pharmacy.

“Physician dispensing also drastically and artificially inflates the cost of workers’ compensation pharmacy costs. Physician-dispensed prescriptions typically cost three to ten times the amount of the same prescription filled by a retail pharmacy. More recent studies point to longer claim duration, more claimants prescribed opioids for longer periods, higher overall medical costs, higher indemnity expense, and poorer outcomes associated with claims with physician-dispensed drugs,” the report said.

The survey also found a greater willingness on the part of the work comp industry to utilize urine drug testing. Four years ago, half of the survey respondents said they were using drug tests to monitor employees who had filed work comp claims. The 2014 survey found that three-quarters of respondents have implemented or will implement a drug testing program.

Reader Calls for Pain Patient 'Bill of Rights'

By Pat Anson, Editor

A North Carolina woman who suffers from Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy and several other chronic pain issues wrote to us recently about a serious problem she had with a urine drug test (UDT) performed in her doctor’s office.

Her urine tested positive for oxycodone and hydrocodone, two opioid pain medications she did not have prescriptions for. So the doctor dropped Paulette Waters from his practice, informing her by registered letter that she would no longer be his patient after 12 years without any other issues.

“This is where my horror story starts and has as of yet to end. The letter stated that I had broken the pain agreement and my doctor would not be seeing me anymore. The letter being generic and not including any details or UDT results,” wrote Paulette, who asked that Pain News Network not use her real name because she’s afraid of being blackballed by more doctors.

We’ve written before about these “point of care” (POC) urine tests. The immunoassay tests are often used by doctors to screen pain patients for the misuse or abuse of drugs – but they’re wrong about half the time. One study, for example, found that POC tests give false positives 41% of the time for oxycodone. Sometimes even a simple over-the-counter medication like ibuprofen can trigger a false positive for marijuana.

A more complex laboratory test that uses chromatography-mass-spectrometry to identify individual molecules is far more accurate than POC tests, but they cost thousands of dollars -- something many insurers and patients are unwilling or unable to pay for.

Instead of conducting additional tests or giving a patient the benefit of the doubt, some doctors take the easy way out by dropping patients like Paulette.

“The problem now has become that since this test, no pain clinic will see me, let alone let me tell my side of the story,” says Paulette, who has been struggling for the past year to clear her name and get the pain medication she needs.

“Knowing I have a legitimate chronic disease there is no cure for, why would I jeopardize myself by doing something that would put me in a position to not have the medicine I needed to help me live somewhat of a normal life?” she asks.

Paulette has called different lawyers and even the ACLU, but no one has taken her case. She’s also written to the state medical board, believing her doctor didn’t follow proper protocol before dismissing her.

“As of now a patient who legitimately suffers from chronic pain has no voice, recourse or method to keep them from being falsely accused of failing a urinary drug test,” she adds.

Patient Bill of Rights

Paulette thinks it’s long past time for a “Patient Bill of Rights” – one that spells out exactly what’s expected of doctors andpatients before, during and after a drug test, including:

1. Make patients aware that UDT’s can have false positives and false negatives.
2. Inform patients what kind of test they are taking.
3. Make sure the patient and doctor have a list of all prescription drugs the patient is taking, including over-the-counter meds, vitamins and supplements that could affect the test results.
4. Make patients aware what consequences they could face if a test result is abnormal.
5. Make sure the patient has a signed copy of their pain contract or drug agreement.
6. Allow the patient to observe the urine sample being sealed in front of them.
7. Make patients aware that insurance companies do not always pay for drug tests.
8. Make doctors follow guidelines if there is an abnormal test result. Have them tell the patient in person, instead of a generic letter dismissing them.
9. Allow at least one more reliable drug screen to be sure false positives or negatives did not occur.

Paulette says pain patients have paid a price for too long in the “War on Drugs” – becoming casualties of misguided policies they have no voice in. 

“All of these battles are between the DEA, insurance companies and doctors,” she says. “The one person that is left out is the patient who is the one suffering. that only has the option of seeing a doctor for their chronic pain. This leads them to such things as buying street drugs, depression, committing suicide, and other health problems because their legitimate chronic pain is not under control.”

Readers Sound Off on Urine Drug Tests

By Pat Anson, Editor

Our recent series of stories on urine drugs screens – and how they are often unreliable or misinterpreted by doctors – struck a note with several readers who said they were falsely accused of abusing or misusing drugs.

Timmi Jernigan is a 54-year old retired educator in South Carolina who says she was “fired” last month by her doctor after a single drug test. Timmi has a prescription for Adderall – a drug used to treat attention deficit disorder – but the amount detected in her system was low.

A week after the test, she received a registered letter from the doctor discharging her.

"On 4/23/15 a drug test was performed which shows you are not taking the controlled substance prescribed. This in in violation of your drug agreement and we will no longer continue your care. We will see you for an emergency only for the next thirty days. During this time we will not prescribe any controlled substances. If you feel you need drug rehabilitation please contact our office for a referral,” the letter said.

 “Just like that. No follow-up appointment to discuss this test. I called and they would not let me see the doctor,” Timmi wrote to Pain News Network.

Timmi wanted to remind the doctor that a month earlier they had agreed to lower the amount of Adderall she was taking because it might worsen her high blood pressure.

“To suggest (per the letter) that I need drug rehabilitation because there is not enough amphetamine in my system is ludicrous at best,” she wrote.

Now Timmi is worried that the discharge letter in her medical files will damage her reputation and prevent her from finding another doctor.  Adding insult to injury, she received a bill for $1,300 from Ameritox, the drug screening company that performed the test – which is not covered by her insurance.

"I was not made aware of the huge cost involved in this ‘not medically necessary’ test. I was not even given a choice,” Timmi said.

"Anytime you are tested to this degree, you are convicted before being charged,” wrote Kim Miller, advocacy director of the Kentuckiana Fibromyalgia Support Group. “If you are the patient testing with a false positive for marijuana or a drug you are not prescribed, it can mean your last prescription of pain medication for a crime you didn't commit! Yes, I said ‘crime’ because that's the way chronic pain patients are treated anymore.”

False Negatives

Sometimes it’s not a false positive that gets a patient in trouble, but a false negative that indicates they may not be taking a prescribed medication – a red flag that could indicate the drug is being diverted.

That’s what happened to another woman – we’ll call her “Kathryn” -- who prefers to remain anonymous. Kathryn was accused of not taking klonopin, a prescribed medication for anxiety, after it didn’t show up in her drug screen.

“I was taking it as prescribed but no one listened. I was treated horribly,” Kathryn wrote. “After a lot of calls, the support of my husband, primary care doctor, insistence with staff (who made me feel like a criminal) and a revisit with doctor, Doc agreed med was at low enough level it wouldn't necessarily show up.”

“It's a shame though that patients have to pay literally and figuratively for the urine tests and revisits,” said Kathryn, who suffers from back pain, osteoarthritis, fibromyalgia and carpal tunnel syndrome.

Some readers did their own detective work to find out why they tested positive for a drug they weren’t taking. One shared with us a website called AskDocWeb that keeps a list of hundreds of medications, over-the-counter drugs, foods and even household products that can trigger a false positive. Poppy seeds in a muffin, for example, can trigger a false positive for opiates. And the pain reliever ibuprofen could get you flagged for marijuana.

“All this, and there is no scientific evidence to support that urine drug screens are curbing addiction. Would our money be better spent on programs to help those with addiction, which would not interfere with people who use their medications responsibly? Is a middle man once again driving up the costs of healthcare?” asked Celeste Cooper, a retired nurse and fibromyalgia advocate.

For more information about the $4 billion dollar a year drug screening industry, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has a story about the "Hidden Errors" found at drug testing laboratories.

Doctor Defends Use of Urine Drug Tests

By Pat Anson, Editor

A prominent pain doctor is disputing reports that a widely used urine drug test often gives faulty results.

“They are reasonably reliable and highly cost effective for use in a pain management practice. I would strongly recommend the practitioners use this,” said Laxmaiah Manchikanti, MD, chairman and CEO of the American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians.

Dr. LAXMAIAH MANCHIKANTI

Dr. Manchikanti, who is medical director of a pain clinic in Paducah, Kentucky, was the lead author of a study published in the journal Pain Physician in 2011, which looked at the reliability of immunoassay “point-of-care” (POC) tests. The urine tests are inexpensive and give immediate results, and doctors often use them to monitor their patients for opioid or illicit drug use.

“The UDT (urine drug test) with immunoassay in an office setting is appropriate, convenient and cost effective. Compared with laboratory testing for opioids and illicit drugs, immunoassay office testing had high specificity and agreement,” Manchikanti's study found.

Pain News Network recently reported on the results of a second study conducted by Millennium Health, a San Diego-based drug testing laboratory, which found that POC tests were wrong about half the time – frequently giving false positive and false negatives results for drugs like marijuana and oxycodone. The Millennium study advocates the use of chromatography-mass-spectrometry – a more complex laboratory test that costs thousands of dollars – to confirm POC test results.

“Following the advice from companies in reference to numerous expensive tests and also income generating avenues will only lead to time in the slammer and will not improve patient care at all,” said Manchikanti.

“(The) Millennium study is performed by the company which makes a living by testing. The more samples that are sent to them, the better off they are. Further, they are not even a practical setting. From our practice we send approximately only 2% of the samples for confirmation testing. Even then, the patients can’t pay their bills.”

Manchikanti’s study found false negative and false positive rates for POC tests that were far below the rates reported by Millennium.

For example, Millennium’s false positive rate for oxycodone was 41.3 percent. For Manchikanti, it was only 7.7 percent.

Millennium’s false positive rate for marijuana was 21.3 percent. For Manchikanti, it was just 2 percent.

There were discrepancies between the two studies for several other drugs, including methadone, cocaine and methamphetamine.

Millennium Sponsored Both Studies

How could two studies come to such different conclusions?

There were some differences in their design. Urine samples in the Millennium study came from nearly 4,300 patients in addiction treatment clinics, while the urine samples in Manchikanti’s study came from 1,000 patients in pain management programs. Millennium maintains the patients in its study were younger and more likely to be drug users.

Ironically, the laboratory tests for both studies were conducted by Millennium – which collected samples and provided chromatography-mass-spectrometry testing at no cost to Manchikanti. Millennium is identified as the “sponsor” of Manchikanti’s study, but he says the company had “no influence or interference” in his and his three co-authors’ findings.

“We had our agreement in the beginning itself that they will not be involved in any way in writing the manuscript or publishing the results. Consequently, they really did not have much input into the publication. The publication was as it is and without any bias from the industry,” Manchikanti wrote in an email to Pain News Network.

Millennium’s study, which was published last year in the Journal of Opioid Management, had six co-authors. All but one were employees of the company. The lone exception is a pain management doctor who frequently testifies as a legal expert for Millennium in court cases.

A source with broad experience in the drug testing industry told Pain News Network the data in Millennium’s study was “skewed toward exaggeration.”

“It does not surprise me that Millennium would show a high rate of inconsistencies with the POC test. Remember, their business is to sell confirmation testing, so they will skew the way they present data to try to influence the market to do more confirmation testing.  In most cases, that’s how it works in any study conducted or funded by a device or pharmaceutical company,” the source said.

Millennium bristles at the notion that its study was biased.

“Millennium Health strongly disagrees with the characterization… that the study was skewed or biased in any way,” the company said in a statement to Pain News Network.

“The study was accepted and published by a well-respected, peer-reviewed publication. Millennium Research Institute is committed to the highest ethical and research science standards, and we stand by the results of our study. The study was based on random samples from addiction treatment clients. The data clearly indicated that immunoassay, or point-of-care, tests have a high rate of false positives and false negatives when used to screen patients for illicit drug use.

“Millennium is committed to providing data that helps clinicians evaluate the best course of treatment for patients with pain and addiction issues. Millennium Health performs only the tests ordered by clinicians.”

In recent years a growing number of doctors who treat addicts and pain patients have required them to submit to drug tests. The competition between Millennium and other laboratories for this business is intense. According to one estimate, drug testing has grown into a lucrative $4 billion dollar a year industry.

But Manchikanti maintains that a single inexpensive urine test that costs about $20 is often the only one that’s needed.

“If a proper (patient) history is provided which matches with the test, there is no need for further testing,” he said.