Doctor Shopping

The practice of a patient visiting multiple physicians, typically without disclosing the other visits, to obtain multiple, overlapping prescriptions for a controlled substance, most often an opioid or benzodiazepine, in a quantity exceeding what any single prescriber would knowingly authorize. Documented as a significant contributor to prescription drug diversion and misuse, particularly during the opioid epidemic that intensified in the United States from the late 1990s onward, doctor shopping is addressed nationally through prescription drug monitoring programs, state-run electronic databases that track a patient's controlled substance prescriptions across participating providers and pharmacies so an individual prescriber can detect a pattern consistent with doctor shopping before writing a new prescription. A number of states criminalize doctor shopping as a distinct offense, separate from simple prescription fraud or forgery, specifically targeting the act of obtaining a controlled substance prescription from a provider without disclosing a recent prescription for the same or a similar drug from another provider.