As opioid death toll worsens, California doctors will soon be required to perform database checks

By the time the 59-year-old woman overdosed in the late summer of 2013, she’d been given 75 prescriptions by three primary care doctors, a psychiatrist and a pain specialist in one year.

Her deadly cocktail: an opioid painkiller, a sleeping aid and anti-anxiety medication.

Had any of the five physicians…