Assignment 4A

1) I have a belief that a significant portion of U.S adults suffer from an opioid addiction, and that this problem is caused through street and prescription drugs, but is made worse by hospitals that mindlessly assign narcotics to returning patients instead of offering other solutions such as pain therapy, surgery, or other options that target the source of the pain instead of temporary masking the effect of it.
2) This opportunity creates a market for doctors who specialize in pain management to specifically target the source of the pain through means such as block surgery and therapy. The unmet need is a supply of knowledgeable doctors with the desire to provide fewer narcotics to patients. The people who have the unmet need are patients, who would be better off with a long term solution to this problem instead of repeatedly being given addictive narcotics. Also hospitals would support this because targeting the source of pain means fewer repeat patients come in, and there would be fewer drug-related crime accidents.
3) The most common customer would be patients referred directly from the hospital, especially when they are at maximum capacity and are looking to quickly discharge patients. Another group of customers are doctors, because they have to buy into this idea in order to take a place and profit from it, and help solve this problem.
4a) The first person I talked to was my father. My dad has worked as a doctor for almost two decades and has seen first hand the inefficiencies of narcotic drug prescription in the hospital. He talked to me about the high number of patients who repeatedly come back to the hospital, often times not to seek any treatment, but to receive more of the narcotics they've become addicted to. He believes that the exact nature of the need is a supply of reliable doctors who are willing to attempt working in a new type of environment, which could start within a hospital, and eventually transition to a separate clinic. Doctors are able to know their customers when they receive consults, meaning that patients schedule a meeting with the doctor to be diagnosed and see if they are a good candidate to receive this treatment. He explains that while perhaps many patients will seek help because of their addiction, others will not seek help, but will be directly referred from the hospital itself.
4b) Dawson Johnson is a 21 year old junior at Florida State University. Although we've never met before, I was able to interview him over the phone through a mutual friend. Dawson is relevant to this opportunity because of Adderall. While he does not have any disorder that makes him legally eligible for Adderall, he was legally prescribed it through a doctor because he "simply listed the common symptoms". He takes the prescription to study for several hours at a time before exams and do well on tests. Dawson does not agree with the program I had put forward with his own situation. He is not addicted to Adderall, but only takes it once in a while to help him focus. While he does not believe he has a problem, he believes that the fact he was so easily able to receive this prescription drug illustrates the fact that patients can often receive narcotics in hospitals by just listing the right symptoms.
4c) Molly Ungrady is a close family friend who suffered from a severe car accident several years ago, and was treated in the hospital. While Molly was treated and recovered from her physical injuries from the crash, she left the hospital with several prescription drugs to help[ reduce the pain once she was at home. While the pain was already gone, she continued to take these prescriptions and by the time they ran out she found herself craving more of them. While she didn't realize this was a problem at first after she returned to the hospital asking for more medication, and was referred to my father she slowly came to realize the extent of her addiction. She was allowed more of the medication, but under the supervision of another pain doctor she slowly took less and less until she became cured of her addiction. She tells me that this story opened her eyes to the possibility of other people becoming addicted to the same prescriptions she was given. Because of this she supports the idea of stopping the prescription of these medications in certain cases in exchange for other routes to wellness.
5) In certain situations, such as with Molly's I believe that this idea has tremendous potential to help people who unwillingly fall into this situation and seek help to return to normal life. However, after talking with Dawson, I believe that a weakness with the plan could be people who are addicted to the prescriptions so heavily that they do not wish to seek treatment because they do not want to lose the drugs that they are given. Finally, I believe it would be very effective as a preventative cure, in order to prevent patients from taking narcotics in the first place.
7) After this reflection, I believe that a significant portion of the original opportunity is still there. Many patients who actively seek help, as well as patients who could be assigned to try this alternate treatment as a way to lessen the reliance of narcotics would still be potential customers. However, a problem is that because of the years of training it takes to become a doctor, the market for this applies mostly to professional doctors who already have a reliable job. This could pose a problem because since many doctors are already well paid there is little incentive at first to try something different that may not work or be as lucrative. While I believe that these entrepreneurs should be open to customer feedback, they should be cautious, because many of the patients may give an dishonest opinion in this specific situation because of their incentive to keep taking the drugs they are addicted to.