{"id":404353,"date":"2026-01-13T09:10:20","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T09:10:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/404353\/"},"modified":"2026-01-13T09:10:20","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T09:10:20","slug":"just-hell-oregon-medical-group-patients-stranded-without-pain-medications","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/404353\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Just hell\u2019: Oregon Medical Group patients stranded without pain medications"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\tQuickTake: <\/p>\n

Chronic pain patients at the clinic say they were abruptly left without medication as opioid prescribing practices shifted nationwide. A former employee and medical leaders warn that changes without careful individualized transitions can leave patients at risk.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Pat Montgomery cannot get out of bed without medication.<\/p>\n

He has several screws in his back, to help hold his spine together. It took nine surgeries \u2014 with another soon to be scheduled \u2014 to stabilize his lower spine, where the cushioning cartilage has worn away. Without it, bone rubs against bone.<\/p>\n

Most people experience painful degeneration as they age. For Montgomery, a 71-year-old who worked in construction, the condition is extreme.<\/p>\n

To walk, to move through his day, to spend time with his wife, Helene, and their grandchildren, Montgomery relies on an assortment of medications. He keeps them locked in a drawer, stored inside a coffee can.<\/p>\n

His prescriptions include oxycodone, gabapentin and morphine.<\/p>\n

\"\"An X-ray of Pat Montgomery\u2019s spine shows screws from multiple surgeries. Credit: Ashli Blow \/ Lookout Eugene-Springfield<\/p>\n

\"\"Pat Montgomery\u2019s medications are stored in a coffee can he keeps locked away at his home. Credit: Ashli Blow \/ Lookout Eugene-Springfield<\/p>\n

Montgomery manages his 28-day supply carefully. So, last summer, with about a week\u2019s worth of medication left, Montgomery called his clinic, Oregon Medical Group, or OMG, for a routine refill.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey would not give him his pain pills,\u201d Helene Montgomery said from their Veneta home.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI was freaking out, because I know what happens when I run out of medication,\u201d said Pat Montgomery. \u201cIt\u2019s just hell.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Desperate, Montgomery called physician assistant Jeff Canter, who wrote his previous prescription. Canter had recently left OMG\u2019s integrative pain management team for another practice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Turns out, Montgomery wasn\u2019t the only patient ringing Canter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of them were bawling,\u201d Canter said. \u201cIt\u2019s heart-wrenching to have somebody call and say, \u2018I\u2019ve been without my meds for three weeks now \u2014 or even three days \u2014 and I\u2019m going into withdrawals, and they won\u2019t even answer my phone calls.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Canter, who was reflecting on his own experiences, estimates that several hundred patients struggled to access both pain medication and supplemental treatments after he left OMG last July.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Jeff Canter, a physician assistant who worked at Oregon Medical Group and now practices at Fall Creek Pain Management, sits at his office desk in Eugene. Credit: Ashli Blow \/ Lookout Eugene-Springfield<\/p>\n

He is among a wave of medical professionals who have departed as the clinic grapples with staff turnover and mounting strain on basic patient care \u2014 fallout that follows OMG\u2019s 2020 acquisition by Optum, a national health care company and a division of UnitedHealth Group.<\/p>\n

OMG is hardly unique, however. Nationwide, the health care system is reckoning with how to treat chronic pain patients, especially for people who were seen for care in a different era of medication management \u2014 people like Montgomery, whose problems started 15 years ago. Then, physicians and their assistants were broadly prescribing opioids, guided in part by pharmaceutical claims that downplayed addiction risks.<\/p>\n

As the opioid epidemic wore on, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention modified recommendations, shifting away from medication-centered pain treatment toward interventions such as injections, physical therapy and behavioral approaches.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At Oregon Medical Group, Canter and patients who spoke with Lookout Eugene-Springfield said, people were being abruptly cut off from medication, rather than guided through gradual tapering, with clear pathways to alternative treatment \u2014 a shift they warned could carry dangerous consequences.<\/p>\n

\u2018Just get rid of them\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n

Canter has spent more than 40 years in medicine, moving between military service and civilian care, treating patients while rising through the ranks. But it\u2019s also personal.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI always fall back on the fact that I am a chronic pain patient. I empathize,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While serving as a Navy hospital corpsman in 1994, he injured his back lifting a patient from a wheelchair to a bed. The injury never fully healed. Over time, it worsened, aggravated by everyday activity, including exercise and the physical demands of his work.<\/p>\n

After retiring from the military, Canter was hired by Oregon Medical Group in 2020, in the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic and around the time Optum acquired the clinic. He said he did not notice significant changes at OMG until about two years later.<\/p>\n

That was when doctors on the integrative pain team began leaving \u2014 some to retire, another over contracting disputes \u2014 and Canter found himself absorbing an influx of patients.<\/p>\n

Between August 2022 and March 2023, he recalls working nearly every day of the week for almost five months, splitting time between the clinic and his home office, sitting late into the night between two large computer screens to complete patient charts.<\/p>\n

\u201cPatients needed care,\u201d Canter said. \u201cThese providers left. It\u2019s not their fault.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

What ultimately led Canter to submit his notice was not the workload, but a shift in approach.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Oregon Optum\u2019s executive medical director, Dr. Philip Capp, issued new directives to the pain integration team, Canter said. Canter said he was told to:\u00a0<\/p>\n

Discharge pain patients who did not have a primary care provider within Oregon Medical Group. The directive came as OMG already discharged thousands of patients <\/a>in the Eugene area from primary care, leaving many without a regular doctor.<\/p>\n

Discharge pain patients to Oregon Medical Group primary care providers, if they still had one, should their prescriptions exceed certain opioid thresholds.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Carry out discharges without individualized review of patient circumstances.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a good soldier, I can say, \u2018OK, that\u2019s what you want to do, but let\u2019s do it smartly. Let\u2019s wean them down or convert them over to a safer medication. Let\u2019s make sure they have somewhere to go,\u2019\u201d Canter said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey said, \u2018No, just get rid of them.’\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Optum denied Lookout Eugene-Springfield\u2019s request to interview Capp and did not respond to specific questions sent by email, despite repeated attempts. A spokesperson, Karrie Spitzer, provided a blanket response:<\/p>\n

\u201cOur pain management and prescribing policies for controlled substances are aligned with the Oregon Health Authority and CDC guidelines, including patient compliance with prescription refill criteria. Patient safety is our top priority. Patients are encouraged to contact our pain management team with any questions or concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prescription whiplash\u00a0<\/p>\n

Moxie Loeffler, a doctor who sits on the governor-appointed Oregon Alcohol and Drug Policy Commission, has worked with prescriptions throughout her career and has watched how the management of them has changed over time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the switches in opioid prescribing have given my patients a lot of whiplash and hurt them a lot over the years,\u201d Loeffler said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Moxie Loeffler treats substance use disorder at PeaceHealth. Loeffler has worked with opioid prescribing throughout her career and serves in a public policy role on pain and addiction. Credit: Ashli Blow \/ Lookout Eugene-Springfield<\/p>\n

That whiplash dates back to the 1980s, when health care providers began to recognize that patients\u2019 pain was not being taken seriously. By the early 2000s, pain affected an estimated 76.2 million Americans \u2014 more than diabetes, heart disease and cancer combined \u2014 according to the National Center for Health Statistics.<\/p>\n

So when doctors like Loeffler were in medical training in 2005, pain was taught as the fifth vital sign. Students learned to treat pain as if it could be easily measured, like body temperature or blood pressure.<\/p>\n

Pain, however, is not something that can be evaluated objectively with an instrument like an X-ray. For example, a scan can reveal a broken bone, but it cannot show how that injury feels to a patient. Pain scores \u2014 such as when a doctor asks a patient to rate their pain on a scale \u2014 are subjective when considered on their own.<\/p>\n

Still, medical students were taught to take patients at their word, education that persisted for many through 2020.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the health care system grew more strained, and clinics were not equipped to offer immediate alternatives such as physical therapy, stress reduction or sleep support for pain.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve worked in great clinics,\u201d Loeffler said, but added: \u201cI\u2019ve never seen a clinic that has all these things in one place and available right when the patient comes in complaining of pain. So what we did have is a quick fix.\u201d<\/p>\n

The quick fix was opioids.<\/p>\n

In that era, corporations such as Purdue Pharma were widely trusted that their products were safe, though later the company admitted it made false claims about the addictive risks of its products like OxyContin.<\/p>\n

In response, the CDC issued prescribing guidelines in 2016 and again in 2022. While the CDC meant the guidelines as recommendations, some clinics treated them as a hard rule.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a 2024 letter, Oregon Medical Board\u2019s medical director, Dr. David Farris, said the most recent guidelines from 2022 were meant to move doctors away from rigid cutoffs and back toward individual clinical judgment.<\/p>\n

Instead, some practitioners grew concerned about the subjectivity of clinical judgment and how those decisions might be scrutinized by the medical board, which oversees medical licenses and regulates clinical practice in the state.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Board is well aware some number of clinicians have shied away from long-term pain management in part or in whole for fear of Board sanctions,\u201d he wrote. \u201cWe wish it weren\u2019t so, and the Board is hopeful the realignment in prescribing guidance will provide reassurance to those licensees caring for patients with long-term pain.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Jeff Canter, a physician assistant at Fall Creek Pain Management, holds a model of a lumbar spine. Cartilage in the spine can wear down with age, causing pain to varying degrees. Those with extreme conditions often rely on medications to stay mobile. Credit: Ashli Blow \/ Lookout Eugene-Springfield<\/p>\n

Lookout Eugene-Springfield asked to talk with the Oregon Medical Board about OMG and issues with patients obtaining prescriptions and treatment. Spokesperson Elizabeth Ross said the board does not grant interviews.<\/p>\n

When asked about patient complaints filed with the board in recent months regarding Oregon Medical Group, Ross\u2019 team said the board could not release information, citing confidentiality under Oregon law.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018Nobody ends up stranded\u2019<\/p>\n

For medical professionals like Loeffler and Canter, how patients are guided through this transition matters. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey can refill [prescriptions] and keep [patients] stable. They can taper them in these situations, so that nobody ends up stranded,\u201d Loeffler said. \u201cI don\u2019t think that we ought to abandon one whole part of their care and make them vulnerable to using street drugs or overdosing or suddenly having a major pain crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think that we ought to abandon one whole part of their care.<\/p>\n

Moxie Loeffler<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Loeffler treats substance use disorder at PeaceHealth, specifically helping patients move to opioid alternatives like buprenorphine, which has a weaker effect than other drugs and helps reduce overdoses. But it\u2019s not a solution that fits everyone, especially for pain.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In some cases \u2014 such as when patients do not respond to buprenorphine or other treatments \u2014 people with severe pain may still be prescribed more potent medications like methadone.<\/p>\n

Methadone is typically used to help people working through addiction, but its long-acting nature can make it effective for severe, chronic pain.<\/p>\n

It is an opioid that was also cut off for some Oregon Medical Group patients, Canter told Lookout Eugene-Springfield. He said those patients were directed to the Lane County methadone clinic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That clinic treats people whose primary diagnosis is an opioid use disorder. It does not provide care for patients whose main condition is chronic pain.<\/p>\n

But the county\u2019s methadone clinic has seen an increase in people seeking pain management, said Terry Fields, program manager at the Lane County Treatment Center. The increase coincided with a continued decline in the availability of pain treatment across the community, she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

More than 1,000 people in Lane County have a methadone prescription for pain, according to data from the Oregon Health Authority, as of 2024, the most recent year with complete data available.<\/p>\n

Behind these numbers and policies are families like the Montgomerys. A lack of direction and support during the transition left them destabilized, they said, and in the dark about future care and their ability to function day to day.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat OMG did was wrong,\u201d said Pat Montgomery, who eventually received his prescriptions from Fall Creek Pain Management, where Canter now practices. \u00a0<\/p>\n

For Montgomery, the alternative to medication would be another risky surgery to remove and put new hardware in his back \u2014 a procedure a previous doctor at OMG advised him against \u2014 and even then, there is no guarantee it would help.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe can only live on those [medications] to actually move and do something,\u201d said Helene Montgomery. \u201cHe would be a vegetable without them and in extreme pain.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

This story was updated to reflect that Canter spoke on behalf of himself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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