Frequently Asked Questions

Immediate Help/Most Common Questions:

Unfortunately, no. As much as we’d love to be able to help with this directly, we do not keep a database of prescribers. Listing providers publicly could put them and their patients at risk in today’s climate of surveillance and punishment.

Instead, we suggest joining your state’s DPF Facebook group (you can find the full list here). Once you’re in the group, you can ask for suggestions and connect with others through private messages.

We are sorry you are in this situation.

You’re not alone, and there are concrete steps you can take.

Below is a list of actions we recommend, based on real-world feedback from hundreds of patients facing the same challenges:

  1. Join DPF’s Facebook Groups
    •  Join both the national and your state-specific DPF Facebook group. (View Information Here) You won’t find prescriber names posted publicly, but you will find guidance, community, and other patients in your state who may be able to connect privately or recommend providers.
  1. Request Your Medical Records
    • Get a copy of your electronic health record, including your doctor’s notes.
    • Our website includes guides on how to request your records and understand your rights.  (link here)
    • If your provider was shut down, it may take time, but request them anyway.
  1. Contact Your Insurance Provider
    • Some insurers have programs for abandoned patients or care-transition teams. It’s rare, but it happens.
    • Ask if they can connect you with another prescriber or a care coordinator.
  1. Reach Out to Your Primary Care Doctor
    • If you have a PCP, schedule an appointment. If you don’t, try to find one.
    • Don’t explain everything or mention controlled substances over the phone—just ask for a new-patient appointment.
    • At your visit, you can say something like: “I lost my pain management provider. This is the medication I’ve been on. Would you be willing to take over my care, at least temporarily?”
    • Be ready to explain what else you do for pain management and be open to trying new approaches.
  1. Stretch Any Remaining Medication
     (Not medical advice, just an option.)
    • If you still have medication left, try to taper slowly and carefully.
    • We know you may already be undertreated, but spreading it out can help soften withdrawal and give you more time to find a new provider.
  1. Consider Kratom (If Legal in Your State)
    • We suggest visiting the American Kratom Association for more information.
  1. Contact Your State Department of Health
    • Ask to speak with the “trusted contact for clinic closures or patient abandonment.” Each state is supposed to have two people in this role to help coordinate care or overdose prevention. They may not be familiar with this information, but it doesn’t hurt to try.
  1. Call a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC)
    • These government-funded clinics sometimes receive support to help abandoned patients, especially those on Medicaid. Results can be hit or miss, but it’s worth calling to ask if they can help.
  1. As a Last Resort, Visit the Emergency Room
    • While many patients are treated poorly in the ER, in a crisis they may provide a short “bridge prescription” or referral. Be honest about your situation. Some providers will listen, some won’t, but if you’re out of options, it’s worth trying.
  1. Consider a Methadone Clinic
    • This option has trade-offs. It may flag you for OUD, and daily visits can be difficult for many, but it may serve as a last-resort option for some abandoned pain patients.
  1. Once You’re Stable, File a Complaint
    • If your abandonment was unethical or illegal (for example, no 30-day supply or no referral), file a complaint with your state medical board, health department, or insurance company. Even if your doctor was shut down, you can still submit a general statement documenting how this has harmed you.
  1. Keep Detailed Notes
    • Each time you make a call, write down the date, time, name of the person, and what was said. If it’s legal in your state, record the calls, too. This paper trail can help if you need to appeal, report, or revisit your case later.
  1. Stay Connected and Support the Cause

Multiple industries, each with something to gain from eliminating or greatly reducing prescription opioids, joined forces to create what we now call the opioid elimination industry.

At the center of it all? Money.

Once lawyers and attorneys general saw how much was made from the tobacco settlements, they began pushing for a massive opioid MDL (multi-district litigation). Many even said outright that they wanted to make opioids “the next tobacco.”

To win those lawsuits, they needed to manufacture a “standard of care” that would label opioid prescribing as excessive, dangerous, or negligent. That’s what the 2016 CDC Guideline provided. But, that was just the start.

How the System Was Built to Criminalize Prescribing and Profit from the Fallout:

  • Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) were hired by lawyers in the early 2010s to serve as expert witnesses and shape public policy.

  • The group PROP (Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing) was formed. Its members went on to influence the CDC Guideline, testify in court, and profit as litigation consultant, and they’re still doing it today.

  • PDMPs (Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs) were expanded so the government could track prescribing in real time and flag so-called “overprescribers” for investigation or prosecution.

  • NarxCare and other risk-scoring algorithms were layered on top of PDMPs to further automate surveillance and label patients as “high risk.”

  • The DOJ and DEA increased pressure on doctors, launching criminal cases, surprise audits, and license threats, often for nothing more than treating pain.

The Ecosystem of Financial Interests

  • Addiction treatment industry: pushing Suboxone and false OUD diagnoses onto pain patients.

  • Interventional pain industry: pushing spinal cord stimulators, ablations, injections, and other expensive, and often harmful, procedures.

  • Alternative health industry: promoting “non-opioid therapies” such as Pain Reprocessing Therapy, marketed as replacements while opioids were being taken away.

The Bottom Line

What we’re living through now, the mass abandonment of pain patients and forced or abrupt opioid tapers, is the fallout of all of this.

It didn’t happen by accident.
It was coordinated.
And it was done for money.

We no longer offer direct phone advocacy for individuals in hospitals, doctor’s offices, or pharmacy settings. We made this decision because,  in some cases, it can make things worse, not better. Providers may become defensive, and patients may face backlash. It’s a broken system, and we have to be careful not to put people at greater risk.

That said, we’re still here to help:

We’re not doctors or lawyers giving medical or legal advice, but we are advocates who understand this system. We’ll help you figure out what to say, what to ask, and what to do next, without making it worse.

Due to the overwhelming number of messages we receive, we’re not able to monitor or reply to DMs on Facebook Messenger, TikTok, or other platforms.

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Facebook (State and National Groups)
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Facebook Public Business Page
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Need to get in touch? Please use our Contact Us form; that’s the best way to reach us directly.

Want to share your story? We welcome submissions from patients, health care professionals, and loved ones. Use this secure form:
Submit Your Story Here

You can also email Cmerandie@gmail.com or bevschecht@icloud.com

We’re the only national organization actively collecting real-world stories of harm caused by opioid reduction, discontinuation, and abandonment. Your story matters, and it helps us fight back with evidence.

Whether you’re a patient, healthcare provider, or loved one, you can share your experience using this secure form: Submit your story here

Learn & Advocate

Whether you’re here because you lost your doctor, had your medication taken away, or just discovered what’s been happening behind the scenes, you’ve found the right place.

Start by arming yourself with knowledge.

The first step is to learn as much as you can. Understanding the policies, propaganda, and power structures driving today’s pain care and pain patient abandonment/forced opioid taper crisis is the key to pushing back.

Learn about the profiteers of the opioid elimination movement, who they are, how they operate, and how their influence has shaped policy. Knowledge is power, and it’s the foundation of effective advocacy.

If you’re a provider, consider connecting with and organizing other healthcare professionals to speak out and defend ethical pain care together.

We pride ourselves on providing evidence-based information and breaking it down in a way that’s clear, honest, and actionable. You don’t need a policy degree to understand what’s happening, you just need the truth.

Read studies with accurate statistics, and learn how to debunk the propaganda fueling the opioid elimination movement and the litigation narrative behind it.

Explore our Education & Advocacy section

Start with:

Join our Facebook communities

This is also where we post state-specific alerts, advocacy opportunities, and news the media ignores.

Watch and share our videos
Our video content is designed to tell the truth that others are afraid to say, using data, history, and lived experience.

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  • Get access to exclusive content and early releases
  • Support the only advocacy organization focused on patient abandonment and forced tapers
  • Join our private community, and, in our top tier, book one-on-one coaching emails to help you take action or advocate for yourself

Yes, absolutely. One thing DPF takes pride in is bringing you the most up-to-date, evidence-based research, and breaking it down in a way that makes sense. We take the guesswork out of advocacy so you can push back with facts, not fear.

Here’s where to start:

  • Table of Important Studies and Statistics:
    A running list of key studies, real statistics, charts, and citations to use in conversation, media responses, or policy work. Pay close attention to the bottom half of the table where we list the studies showing harm from forced or abrupt tapers.

  • Debunking Lies Section: 
    We tackle the biggest myths surrounding opioids, pain care, addiction, and overdose, backed by hard data and linked sources.


Whether you’re responding to a news article, writing your legislator, or advocating for yourself or a loved one, these tools are here for you.

The Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP) is a government-run database that tracks all controlled substance prescriptions you fill. This includes opioids, stimulants (like ADHD medications), benzodiazepines, sleep aids, muscle relaxers, and more.

PDMPs exist in all 50 states, and while each state operates its own program, usually under the Department of Health or Human Services (HHS), the federal government, especially the Department of Justice, has invested hundreds of millions of dollars (probably into the billions) into building and expanding these systems.

The first PDMP was launched in New York in 1918, but most were created or expanded after 2010 as part of opioid policy reform efforts. Today, a private company called Appriss (now Bamboo Health) connects PDMPs across state lines, allowing your prescription history to follow you almost anywhere in the country.

What is the purpose of the PDMP?

The stated goal is to give healthcare providers “real-time” access to your prescription history to detect things like:

  • “Doctor shopping”
  • Potential misuse of controlled substances
  • Dangerous drug combinations

But over time, PDMPs have become surveillance tools that influence medical care, trigger denials, and shape who does, or doesn’t, get access to treatment. It is also widely used to track “outlier” prescribers, sending report card-type unsolicited reports to them, comparing their prescribing rates to their peers. 

Frequently Asked Questions about PDMP

1. Who enters your information into the PDMP?
Pharmacists or pharmacy technicians input your data when you fill a controlled-substance prescription.

2. Do you have access to your own PDMP report?
Not directly. Each state has different rules. You’ll need to contact your state Department of Health to request your PDMP history and ask how to correct any errors.

3. Who has access to your PDMP report?
Access varies by state, but typically includes:

  • Prescribing providers

  • Pharmacists and pharmacy staff

  • Hospitals and emergency departments

  • In some states, veterinarians, law enforcement, licensing boards, and state agencies

Most states also allow prescribers to have staff members access your PDMP on their behalf.

4. What’s a PDMP “risk score”?
This usually refers to NarxCare, a proprietary algorithm layered on top of the PDMP. NarxCare’s own marketing materials state that it may pull information not only from your prescription data but also from other personal sources such as mental health history, travel distance, and even criminal records. It then produces a risk score that rates whether a provider should prescribe to you.

These scores are not transparent, not validated, and can wrongly label patients as “high risk,” even when they’ve done nothing wrong.

5. Does the PDMP actually reduce overdoses or prevent addiction?
No. Research increasingly shows it may cause more harm than good. The only outcome consistently proven is that PDMPs lower prescribing, nothing else.

 

Major Studies and Resources

One major policy study found that PDMPs fail to reduce opioid overdose deaths and may actually increase the use of black-market opioids:
Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs: Effects on Opioid Prescribing and Drug Overdose Mortality – Reason Foundation

This study found no consistent evidence that PDMPs reduce opioid-related deaths and raised concerns about patients being pushed to the illicit market.

Another key study from the VA and Brown University found that PDMP implementation was linked to increased overdose deaths among veterans after long-term opioid therapy was disrupted:
Association of PDMP Implementation and Use With Opioid Overdose Outcomes Among US Veterans – Oliva et al., JAMA Network Open

The study found a significant increase in overdose risk after patients were flagged or cut off due to PDMP-related actions.

Want to learn more? Start with our podcast.

We created a four-part podcast series explaining everything you need to know about PDMPs, NarxCare, and the broader surveillance system:

NarxCare is a risk-scoring algorithm developed by a company called Bamboo Health (formerly Appriss Health). It is marketed as a clinical decision support tool that integrates with state PDMPs (Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs) and Electronic Health Records (EHRs). Its goal? To assess a patient’s “risk” of misuse, abuse, or overdose based on past prescriptions and other private data, even if a person has never misused medication.

How does NarxCare work?

NarxCare assigns four 3-digit scores to each patient:

  • Narcotic Score
  • Sedative Score
  • Stimulant Score
  • Overdose Risk Score (ORS)

NarxCare remains a “black box” system.

The algorithm behind NarxCare’s risk scores is proprietary, meaning neither patients nor healthcare providers can see exactly how the scores are calculated. What we do know comes from Bamboo Health’s own past marketing materials, white papers, and patent filings, which describe using data from state PDMPs along with dozens of additional data points drawn from outside sources.

These sources have included:

  • Number of prescribers and pharmacies visited within a set time period

  • Prescription overlap from multiple providers

  • Morphine Milligram Equivalent (MME) dosage

  • Use of multiple drug classes (for example, opioids and benzodiazepines)

  • Certain medical and mental health diagnoses (e.g., depression, PTSD, sleep apnea)

  • Distance traveled to obtain prescriptions

  • Criminal justice history

Bamboo Health has stated that it released an updated Overdose Risk Score (ORS) model in late 2023, but has not disclosed what changes were made or what data is currently used. Because the algorithm is proprietary and unverified, providers and patients still have no way to confirm which factors influence their scores or how heavily they are weighted.

You can find Bamboo Health’s own current overview pages here:


Why is NarxCare harmful?

  1. No context is allowed. If a patient sees multiple doctors due to moving, having surgery, or switching insurance, the algorithm still treats it as “doctor shopping.”

  2. It uses biased data. Risk scores may include:
    • Mental health diagnoses, which penalize people with PTSD, depression, and anxiety.
    • Criminal records which disproportionately harm Black and Brown patients.
    • Distance to the doctor penalizes rural and disabled patients who must travel further.

  3. Veterinarians’ prescriptions can count against you. If your pet is prescribed a controlled substance (like tramadol), it can be attributed to you and inflate your score.

  4. There’s no way to see or correct your score. Patients cannot access their NarxCare report. Even many prescribers don’t know how to interpret it.

  5. It’s already causing medical harm. Despite disclaimers that NarxCare is “not intended to be the sole basis of medical decisions,” doctors, pharmacists, and hospitals are:
    • Denying care
    • Refusing to fill prescriptions
    • Dismissing patients from practice
      … based solely on NarxCare scores.

According to a Wired investigation, 20% of people flagged as “doctor shoppers” by NarxCare had cancer,  a condition that often requires multiple prescribers.

Has NarxCare been externally validated?

No, and that’s a serious problem.

  • The algorithm has never been independently validated. The Narcotic Score supposedly has, but it really hasn’t.
  • Its original predictive study was limited, flawed, and likely doesn’t apply to real-world populations.
  • Despite this, Bamboo Health claims NarxCare is “evidence-based.”


One major 2023 peer-reviewed paper stated: “Risk scores like NarxCare may reproduce structural inequities in health care and criminal justice, exacerbating disparities in access and outcomes.”
 JAMIA, 2023

Another 2023 study found NarxCare’s predictive value for overdose to be so low that it misclassified large numbers of patients as high-risk with no valid justification.

Oliva et al., 2023 – Springer

What is DPF doing about it?

The Doctor Patient Forum (DPF) filed a citizen petition with the FDA on March 11, 2025, requesting that NarxCare be regulated as Software as a Medical Device (SaMD), a legal classification requiring: 

  • Independent validation studies
  • Clear evidence of safety and effectiveness
  • Transparent risk and warning disclosures
  • Accountability if the software causes patient harm


We argue that NarxCare meets the FDA’s own criteria for SaMD and should not be allowed to operate without regulation, oversight, or transparency.

Read our full Citizen Petition here (link)

Listen to our 4-part podcast series explaining PDMPs, NarxCare, and the real-world harms:


Watch our NarxCare playlist on YouTube
YouTube PDMP/NarxCare Videos

Additional Reading & Sources

Yes, but not in the way you might expect.

At The Doctor Patient Forum, we fully support multimodal treatment, meaning a combination of approaches that may include:

  • A healthy diet
  • Physical activity and movement (when possible)
  • Physical therapy
  • Non-opioid medications
  • Counseling, support groups, and more

We believe in doing whatever works safely and ethically to help someone manage pain, including opioids.

However, here’s the problem:

The term “multimodal treatment” has been hijacked to mean everything except opioids. This is not what it was ever supposed to mean. This is harming patients.

We’ve never advocated that opioids should be the first line of treatment, but right now, they aren’t being used even when nothing else works. That’s why we focus so heavily on preserving access to opioids, because that’s where the harm is happening.

Other modalities like PT, exercise, or meditation aren’t being restricted or criminalized; opioids are.

Why don’t we talk more about non-opioid options?

Because nobody is banning kale or yoga. But they are criminalizing effective medical care.

Do we receive funding from companies that promote alternative treatments?
No. DPF does not accept funding from any industry, period. We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit supported solely by individual donations and Patreon subscribers.

We do speak up when so-called alternatives cause harm.

We’ve raised red flags about:

  • Epidural steroid injections (ESIs)
  • Spinal cord stimulators (SCS)
  • Off-label use of drugs like Haldol and antipsychotics is being pushed in place of pain meds

We believe patients should have access to all tools, but not at the cost of losing the only treatment that ever worked, and not when it’s harming patients, used solely to eliminate opioids.

There are many ways you can support our work without spending any money, and every single one makes a difference. Here’s how:

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel

Go to The Doctor Patient Forum on YouTube, click like and subscribe, and hit the notification bell so you never miss a video or live feed.
Visit our YouTube channel →

Follow us on social media

The more you follow, the more the algorithm shares our content with others.

Here’s where to find us:

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Share our content

Every like, comment, repost, and tag helps boost visibility. Sharing just one post can help others find us.

Why it matters

All of these actions help the algorithm pick up our content, which means more people will see it, including patients, providers, journalists, and policymakers who need to hear the truth.

If you’ve ever wondered how to help: this is it. Follow, subscribe, and share.

We rely entirely on individual support, no pharma money, no corporate sponsors, no grants, and no hidden agendas. Your donations directly fund our research, patient support, legal advocacy, and public education efforts.

The Doctor Patient Forum is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
All donations, including Patreon subscriptions, are tax-deductible.


Patreon is one of the easiest ways to support our work monthly. Even $5.75/month makes a real impact.

You’ll get access to:

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Thank you for helping us fight for the patients the system has abandoned. We couldn’t do it without you.

We believe in making our content as accessible as possible, so whether you’re new to this issue or deep in the fight, there’s something for you.

Free content available now:

  • Our website – Access fact sheets, guides, state laws, FAQs, and more
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Yes, that’s the plan!

We’re working toward visiting every state to host meet-and-greets, support groups, and presentations. We’ve already made stops in several states, and we’re just getting started.

Want us to come to your area?
Reach out through our Contact Us form and let us know you’re interested. The more requests we get from a region, the sooner we’ll prioritize it.

FAQs about DPF and the work we do:

At The Doctor Patient Forum, this is our top priority because it’s not just a policy issue; it’s a human rights crisis. Patients in pain are being abandoned, tapered without consent, or cut off entirely from treatment that was once effective and necessary. And nobody in power was tracking it. So, we stepped in.

Here’s what we’ve done and will continue to do:

Filed official comments and petitions with the FDA
We’ve submitted multiple formal responses to government dockets and are pushing for federal accountability. These include: (I will send you the links or PDFs to these comments. We will add these to our work on the website so we can link them to that, maybe)

  • Public comments on FDA Dockets (e.g. FDA-2024-N-5331)
  • Our citizen petition FDA-2025-P-0701 asks the FDA to regulate NarxCare as a Software as a Medical Device (SaMD)
  • An upcoming petition calling on the FDA to study the harms caused by opioid reduction, including suicide, overdose, and patient abandonment


Put the abandonment crisis in front of the national media
We’ve made sure this issue is featured in every story we can, whether we’re being interviewed or helping journalists understand the real impact of opioid policy on people’s lives. If it’s being talked about, we made that happen.

Flooded social media with real-world accounts and analysis
We share patient stories, data, policy breakdowns, and push back on misinformation every day. When others were silent, we documented what was happening and kept the pressure on.

Collected patient, provider, and family stories
We’ve built a growing archive of firsthand stories that document the widespread harm of opioid reduction and abandonment, a resource that no government agency or institution was collecting until we did.
Submit your story here

Educated lawmakers, clinicians, and journalists
Behind the scenes, we help researchers, doctors, and legislators understand what’s really happening. We give them the data, stories, and sources they aren’t getting from federal agencies or mainstream organizations.

Explore more of our impact here: DPF in the Media & Our Advocacy

Yes. The Doctor Patient Forum is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit. We are fully transparent about our funding and how donations are used. We do not accept any funding from pharmaceutical companies, device manufacturers, or any corporate sponsors; our work is supported solely by individual donors and Patreon subscribers.

 View DPF’s tax information

We believe that integrity matters, especially in healthcare advocacy. That’s why we remain independent, so we can speak the truth without influence.