Given the background of their patients, state prison officials thought prescribing painkillers for inmates with chronic pain was a poor idea.
So, they set about developing a wider-ranging system to treat inmates with pain, one that focused less on prescription painkillers.
It seems to have worked.
Since establishing a traveling pain management clinic in the middle of 2009, the state is handing out far fewer prescription pain pills, as much as 85 percent fewer doses of some of the drugs.
“We don’t want to make people more addicted through clinical care,” said Helen Hanks, the prison system’s director of medical and forensic services. “Instead of just using medication, we use other things.”
In December 2008, New Hampshire inmates were given more than 18,000 doses of Vicodin.
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