Dr. Simpson, I am sorry that I did not read your article sooner. I have one large point that was missed. I get called on a regular basis by the emergency rooms in my area for patients with "dental pain" my answer to this is send the patient to our office. Most of them do not show up. They are not interested in being treated for their problem, they want drugs. They know if they go to the e.r. no one will look at or treat them if they claim to have a dental problem. They have learned that if they go to the e.r. on Friday night or Saturday morning they will be given enough medication to last thru the weekend. Some of these people go from on e.r. to another, I was called by two e.r.s last week for the same patient (Lancaster then Berlin). The ones I do treat usually ask for pain medication (by name), I now make a habit of calling around to the local pharmacies to find out what prescriptions they had filled recently, it is time consuming but astonishing to find out what some of them already had prescribed to them. I think it would be educational for you to speak with somr of the e.r. physicians and some pharmacists about this. I think it would be very helpful for all involved if we had a data base that we could easily acccess that told us all the presciptions filled by people on NH medicaid. I would be more than happy to tell you more ,237-8919, 237-4133 BRUCE KATZ DDS