Local News

FORT LAUDERDALE (CBS4) ― Broward County has become known as the "pill mill capital" of the United States.

CBS4 saw that firsthand two weeks ago when we watched Broward Sheriff's deputies take the first steps towards dismantling an alleged prescription drug ring.

The operations usually work like this: A person posing as a patient with a legitimate medical problem visits a pain clinic. The doctor at the clinic writes the patient a prescription. That patient then visits several other clinics in South Florida receiving prescriptions for hundreds of pills. The patient then turns those pills over to a mid-level person in the operation for cash. The mid-level person takes the pills to a higher-level person and the pills then begin being distributed on South Florida streets.

Broward Sheriff's Office Sgt. Rich Pisanti sees firsthand how crooked patients and pill mills operate.

"Right now you could go to a clinic every day if you wanted to," Pisanti told CBS 4's Carey Codd "It's illegal, but you could do it. You could go to 10 clinics in 10 days if you wanted to. I see some people get 270 pills in one visit, go right down the street to the next clinic and get 270 more. It's so much more than they could ever take, and they're doing that so they can sell them to other people and make money."

Oftentimes, people come from outside Florida to pain clinics because it is so easy to obtain prescription drugs. Those people then take the pills back to their home states and sell the drugs for inflated sums on the black market.

A report by a Broward County Grand Jury is recommending numerous steps to change that.

The report outlines 18 steps to control and eliminate doctor shopping.

According to the report, "In the past 2 years the number of pain clinics in South Florida mushroomed from 4 to 176, dumping 9 million dose units of Oxycodone in our community every 6 months. Although the pain clinics originated in Broward County, they have spread north quickly throughout the rest of Florida, particularly in the major metropolitan areas."

The grand jury said the best way to curb pill mills is the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program that state legislators passed earlier this year. That program would force doctors, pharmacists and pain clinics to share information in a database keeping track of when patients visited a doctor and how many pills they obtained. If a patient tried to visit multiple doctors in a single day, the patient would be flagged.

However, the report states that funding for the monitoring program is a concern.

"Many witnesses who testified before your Grand Jury expressed concern that the system would not be adequately funded," the report reads. "As the legislation is currently written, the system is to be funded through federal grants or private funding. Although your Grand Jury has confidence that the direct support organization, which will be established by the Office of Drug Control, will assiduously endeavor to locate funding for the system, your Grand Jury considers funding the system to be of the utmost importance."

Sgt. Pisanti explains that that a monitoring program could be an effective tool.

"If your first doctor gave you 100 Oxycodone pills, you couldn't go to a guy around the corner and get 100 more, because the monitoring program would show that you already got your supply for that month," he said.

The Broward County Grand Jury is also recommending several other steps, such as: requiring all doctors who work at pain clinics to review a patient's records before prescribing and dispensing medication; preventing pain clinics from dispensing drugs unless there isn't a pharmacy within 10 miles of the clinic; and requiring pain clinics to accept medical insurance so the clinic cannot operate as a cash-only business.

The report also recommends that another Grand Jury be seated within two years to measure the effectiveness of Florida's Prescription Drug Monitoring Program.

(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

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