1. 2. Id. at 12.
2. 29. See Pain & Policy Studies Group, University of Wisconsin Comprehensive Cancer Center, Data-base of State Laws, Regulations, and Other Official Government Policies, at (last updated November 5, 2002).
3. 37. The lowest dose of OxyContin is 10 mg. An opioid-naïve patient with chronic pain is typically started on 10 mg of OxyContin twice a day, and the dose is increased until the patient's pain is controlled (unless the pain is refractory to opioid therapy or other circumstances exist). Suggested dosing for OxyContin is twice a day or every 12 hours, not four times a day. Patients with cancer pain are more likely than patients with chronic nonmalignant pain to take larger daily doses, but there is usually no way of knowing by daily mg dosing alone whether a physician has over-prescribed OxyContin for an individual patient.
4. “Pain Management, Controlled Substances, and State Medical Board Policy: A Decade of Change,”;Joranson;Journal of Pain and Symptom Management,2002
5. 39. Eighteen respondents thought their boards had not received any such complaints — their pain undertreatment complaint estimate was entered as zero. Of the nineteen who thought their boards had received such complaints, fifteen were able to give a 2001 estimate. If a range was given, the median of the range was entered. The actual range of values was 0 to 25. To correct for the outlier value of 25, that value was “windsorized” to the next highest value of 13. Raw values were then divided by the number of physicians per state (see data at ) and multiplied by 1,000.