Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Terror 'Beyond Description' Grips Patients In Chronic Pain As 'Civil War' Over Opioids Rages On
Two years after the United States saw a record 27,000 deaths involving prescription opioid medications and heroin, doctors and regulators are sharply restricting access to drugs like Oxycontin and Vicodin. But as the pendulum swings in the other direction, many patients who genuinely need drugs to manage their pain say they are being left behind. Doctors can’t agree on how to help them. (Tedeschi, 1/17)
Over the objections of many doctors and their powerful advocacy groups, states are moving to force physicians to check on patients’ narcotic purchasing habits, one of the more effective ways of curbing opioid abuse as the deadly drug epidemic continues. Eighteen states have adopted comprehensive mandates in the past four years requiring doctors who prescribe opioids and other controlled substances to check databases that show whether their patients are getting drugs elsewhere. (Bernstein, 1/14)
Within months of launching a registry to prevent patients from receiving opioids and other potentially addictive prescription drugs from more than one doctor, Pennsylvania saw a substantial drop in the number of prescriptions for painkillers such as Vicodin, OxyContin and Percocet. (Vestal, 1/14)
And in other news on the crisis —
In a grim indicator of the toll the opioid crisis is taking on children, a program is being launched in Massachusetts specifically to help newborns, infants, and toddlers with addicted parents. Health officials say they believe it’s the first such early-intervention program in the state to target these children, some of whom were born drug-addicted. The government-funded initiative will pay for weekly home visits to 36 low-income families in New Bedford, a South Coast community where the number of children born with opiates in their bloodstreams is four times the state average. (Pfeiffer, 1/15)
Heroin and fentanyl grab the headlines, but narcotic painkillers still fill Ohio medicine cabinets. Drug-overdose deaths in Ohio continue to soar, with the 2016 toll expected to far exceed the record 3,050 in 2015. Increasingly, heroin and fentanyl are responsible for overdose deaths. (Johnson, 1/15)
