Good medicine for drug-addicted doctors

GAINESVILLE, Fla., Feb. 27 (UPI) -- Drug addicted doctors are being successfully treated and returning to practice, U.S. researchers say.

The study, published in the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, finds at least three-quarters of doctors enrolled in Physician Health Programs stayed drug-free over a five-year monitoring period.

The results are based on 904 doctors who were treated during 2001-2005 at 16 Physician Health Programs. The results were the same regardless of the doctor's drug of choice -- including alcohol, crack cocaine or prescription drugs.

"Treatment works," study leader Dr. Mark Gold of the University of Florida College of Medicine and the McKnight Brain Institute said in a statement. "It has been shown now to be safe and effective and cost-effective."

Physician Health Programs are not addiction treatment programs but programs combining referral with long-term management that includes monitoring and rapid responses to noncompliance. The aim is to save the lives and careers of physicians as well as to protect the public by addressing doctors' addiction and removing non-compliant doctors from the practice of medicine.

Gold suggests this approach pioneered for doctors works so well it should be a model for treatment of anyone with these diagnoses.