TennCare officials declined to provide the names of the state’s top prescribers for eight powerful drugs when responding earlier this year to a request from a U.S. senator wanting to crack down on unscrupulous prescribing.
In April, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, requested all state Medicaid programs to provide the names and number of prescriptions for the top-10 prescribers of eight drugs, including Xanax, OxyContin and antipsychotics like Seroquel.
TennCare Director Darin Gordon responded in May with a full list of the total prescriptions and amount billed to the state from both 2008 and 2009 records for those drugs. But the bureau declined to identify the prescribers, instead using pseudonyms like “Prescriber 1,” according to the documents.
Nine other states also used generic titles, instead of identifying the doctors by name or by prescription identification number, according to Grassley’s office. That’s out of the 45 states that have responded to Grassley’s request so far. Alabama is the only state that has declined to respond to the request.
TennCare officials explained they “de-identified” the top doctors because the listing implied that the doctors were doing something wrong or fraudulent when the situation is far more complex.