Are you blindly prescribing medication?
 
What are the legal ramifications and how does that affect your liability should there be an adverse effect?
 
As technology advances in the medical industry giving providers the increased ability to diagnose and evaluate patients, the non-use of such technology also increases the level of negligence that a provider will be evaluated as being guilty of, based on meeting standard of care.
 
Liability and Off Label Prescriptions
 
The FDA has stated and the American Medical Association agrees that physicians are free to prescribe approved drugs for any scientifically supported use, whether on- or off-label.”
 
Whether a given off-label prescription meets the standard of care will depend on the level of evidence available to support the use and how the clinician used the available evidence. In general, the more scientific evidence there is to support a given off-label use, the more likely that use is to meet the standard of care.
 
Although a prescription may be considered off-label for any number of reasons, our experience with claims has shown that there are a few particular types of off-label prescriptions that are frequently attacked in litigation following an adverse event.
 
The first is where the dose is significantly higher or lower than the label recommendation; the second is where the drug is given for an indication not on the label; and the third is where the patient is not part of a population included in the clinical trials listed on the label. This last type usually involves children, geriatric patients, or cytocrome types.
 
Liability and Off Label Prescriptions
Psychiatry (Edgmont). Feb 2009; 6(2): 43–44. PMCID: PMC2719453
 
We ask that you evaluate the following information on PharmacoGenomic testing to determine if you are interested in improving your practice in the following ways: