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WEDNESDAYS • May 15, 2019
Richmond & Hampton Roads
LEGACYNEWSPAPER.COM • FREE
Hospitals monitor drugs, opioid deaths decline
Virginia hospitals are monitoring painkiller prescriptions more closely and taking other steps to curb the opioid epidemic, and the efforts may be paying off: Drug overdoses in Virginia have dropped for the first time in six years. In 2016, the opioid epidemic was declared a public health emergency in Virginia. Fatal opioid overdoses increased steadily from 572 in 2012 to 1,230 in 2017. Last year, however, the number of deaths dipped, to
president at Riverside Health System in Newport News, said his medical practice and others across Virginia are prescribing narcotics in a more controlled and efficient way. Frazier was involved in the creation of Virginia’s Emergency Department Care Coordination program. Established by the General Assembly in 2017, the EDCC’s purpose is to “provide a single, statewide technology solution that
1,213, according to preliminary statistics released this week by the Virginia Department of Health. The decrease coincided with data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing a decline in overall prescriptions of opioids — and with moves by Virginia officials and physicians to apply more scrutiny before issuing such prescriptions. Dr. Charles Frazier, senior vice
connects all hospital emergency departments in the Commonwealth” for the purpose of extending and improving patient care, according to ConnectVirginia, a statewide health information exchange. “The purpose of the EDCC is to integrate alerts,” Frazier said. “It shows us alerts of whether or not they (patients) have been in other emergency departments, information on how they were treated, with the
idea being if a patient came in: Who is their primary care doctor? Who can we connect them to?” Frazier said that in the program’s first phase, all hospitals in Virginia were required to submit a year or two of historical patient visit data to the EDCC information exchange by June 2017. “The system is set up to alert emergency department providers and staff if the patient is a frequent emergency department patient, and also if they have been aggressive or abusive to staff,” Frazier said. Frazier said that most of the time, the system is used to direct patients to proper care. “I think part of the problem is if people have a hard time with
kept going to various emergency departments around Richmond — VCU, St. Francis, and others. With the EDCC program, they could see where they had been to, and the health systems worked together, along with the insurance company, to help the patient get the primary care they needed.” Gov. Ralph Northam, a physician himself, helped create the EDCC. He also has been an advocate for the state’s Prescription Monitoring Program. Under that program, Frazier explained, “Every time a pharmacy prescribes a controlled substance, they need to submit the information to the state — the duration, the dosage — and the system tracks how many times and how many providers Shawn Hammonds, who works have prescribed to the patient.” with Rams in Recovery through Virginia Board of Medicine AmeriCorps, holds the kit regulations require seeing chronic issued to community members pain patients every 90 days and who complete Revive! training, conducting drug screens to make teaching them how to potentially sure patients are taking their medications and not taking illicit save the life of someone substances. Regulations also require overdosing on opioids. prescribing an opioid antidote in transportation, they go to the ER for certain high-risk situations. basic health care,” Frazier said. “If “If you’re treating someone with you go to the emergency room for a higher dosages, the regulations sore throat, for example, that can be outline preventative measures for expensive.” overdose,” Frazier said. The second phase of the EDCC, Health officials’ concerns about which was implemented last July, opioids have grown as fatal involves notifying primary care overdoses spiked over the past doctors if their patient is in the decade. Preliminary numbers show emergency department. If the system that 1,484 people died from drug can identify a patient’s primary care overdoses in Virginia in 2018. That doctor, it will send an alert. is more deaths than from guns “One thing we are starting to (1,036) and traffic accidents (958). see are health systems collaborate The total number of overdose on patients,” Frazier said. “There fatalities was down slightly from was a patient at Bon Secours who (continued on page 2)