Doctor Shopping

Doctor shopping or double doctoring refers to the practice of a patient requesting care from multiple physicians, often simultaneously, without making efforts to coordinate care or informing the physicians of the multiple caregivers. This usually stems from a patient's addiction to, or reliance on, certain prescription drugs or other medical treatment. Usually a patient will be treated by their regular physician and be prescribed a drug that is necessary for the legitimate treatment of their current medical condition. Some patients will then actively seek out other physicians to obtain more of the same medication, often by faking or exaggerating the extent of their true condition, in order to feed their addiction to that drug.

Not all patients seeking inappropriate multiple prescriptions of drugs are doing so because of addiction or an intention to abuse the drugs for their recreational effects. In the United States, increasing scrutiny of prescribing practices and high-profile prosecutions of doctors for allegedly over-prescribing drugs such as opiate painkillers and benzodiazepine tranquilizers has made many doctors extremely reluctant to prescribe large doses or repeat prescriptions of these drugs, even to patients with a legitimate medical need.