Pop some popcorn for this spellbinding movie produced by my friends Dr. Alison Block and Dr. Tim Poore! This short documentary tells the roller-coaster ride of Dr. William Hurwitz, a maverick opioid prescriber who at one point was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Even after finishing the film, I’m still left wondering whether Hurwitz was highly delusional or deviously strategic.
Dr. Marcia Glass is a hospitalist and palliative-care doctor working at University Medical Center, a public safety-net hospital in New Orleans. She has worked abroad with several aid groups, including Doctors without Borders and Partners in Health. She has been struck by the harrowing stories of her patients struggling with opioid dependence in New Orleans and troubled by the lack of an organized national response to this crisis.