Opioid

This is the second installment of the ISDS Opioid Surveillance Webinar Series, June - July, 2017. Click here for Part 1 of the Opioid Surveillance Webinar Series and here for Part 3.

This is the first installment of the ISDS Opioid Surveillance Webinar Series, June - July, 2017. Click here for Part 2 of the Opioid Surveillance Webinar Series and here for Part 3.

Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs) are operating in 49 states and several U.S. territories. Current methods for surveillance of prescription drug related behaviors, include the mean daily dosage of morphine milligram equivalent (MME) per patient, annual percentage of days with overlapping prescriptions per patient, and annual multiple provider episodes for multiple controlled substance prescription drugs per patient that are described elsewhere.1,2 This work builds on these efforts by extending longitudinal methods to prescription drug behavior surveillance in order to predict risks associated with prescription drug use.

Objective

This study aims to show the application of longitudinal statistical and epidemiological methods for building a proactive prescription drug surveillance system for public health.

Submitted by uysz on Thu, 06/08/2017 - 01:00

This resource, developed by the Network for Public Health Law and released on June 8, 2017, summarizes state naloxone access and Good Samaritan laws.

Background

Submitted by ctong on Thu, 06/08/2017 - 00:00

Nationally, deaths due to opioid overdose have continually increased for the past 15 years . Deaths specifically related to heroin increased more than four-fold between 2002 and 2014. Hospital inpatient discharge data provide information on non-fatal overdoses, but include a significant lag in reporting time. Syndromic ED visit data provide near real-time identification of public health issues and can be leveraged to inform public health actions on the emerging threat of drug overdose.

Objective

To develop and evaluate syndrome definitions for the identification of acute unintentional drug overdose events including opioid, heroin, and unspecified substances among emergency department (ED) visits in Virginia.

Submitted by teresa.hamby@d… on Sat, 05/27/2017 - 11:34

Objective

Wisconsin is leading the way in novel approaches monitoring health outcomes for opioid-related adverse events. This panel will share innovative public health informatics methods that harness various data sources (e.g., Prescription Drug Monitoring Data (PDMP), death, birth and hospitalization data) for population health surveillance. Discussion will include topics on detection of drug abuse and diversion, identifying potential neonatal abstinence syndrome cases, surveillance of substance-related hospitalizations and overdose deaths, and modeling opioid-related mortality risk factors.

Submitted by teresa.hamby@d… on Sat, 05/27/2017 - 10:10

High rates of morbidity and mortality among Americans related to opioid use constitute a public health epidemic, leading multiple jurisdictions to declare formal states of emergency or public health emergency. Declaring a state of emergency grants states and localities additional resources to address the epidemic immediately. The Fact Sheet, developed by the Network for Public Health Law and released July 20, 2017, provides a brief summary of the emergency declarations in six states.

Submitted by ctong on Wed, 05/24/2017 - 18:43

This report, published January 27, 2017 by the Office of Epidemiology and Prevention Services with the West Virginia Department of Health & Human Resources, is an outbreak report developed in response to an opioid-related overdose incident that occured in Huntington, West Virginia on August 15, 2016.

Submitted by ctong on Wed, 05/24/2017 - 12:42

Drs. Arens, Vo, van Wijk, and Coffin will present a cluster of opioid-related poisoning cases and deaths in San Francisco following ingestion of counterfeit pills designed to look like prescription medication. They will describe the clinical cases and detailed the coordinated public health response, which included the local PCC, a toxicology lab, a public health officer, the local medical examiner, and affected hospitals.

Presenters:

Ann Arens, MD and Kathy Vo, MD, Medical Toxicology Fellows, California Poison Control System, San Francisco Division

There is a resurgence in the need to evaluate the economic burden of prescription drug hospitalizations in the United States. We used the Wisconsin 2014 Hospital Discharge data to examine opioid related hospitalization incidence and costs. Fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid, is frequently being used for as an intraoperative agent in anesthesia, and post-operative recovery in hospitals. According to a 2013 study, synthetic Fentanyl is 40 times more potent than heroin and other prescription opioids; the strength of Fentanyl leads to substantial hospitalizations risks. Since, 1990 it has been available with a prescription in various forms such as transdermal patches or lollipops for treatment of serious chronic pain, most often prescribed for late stage cancer patients. There have been reported fatal overdoses associated with misuse of prescription fentanyl. In Wisconsin number of total opioid related deaths increased by 51% from 2010 to 2014 with the number of deaths involving prescription opioids specifically increased by 23% and number of deaths involving heroin increased by 192%. We hypothesized that opioids prescription drugs, as a proxy of Fentanyl use, result in excessive health care costs.

Objective

In this paper we used hospital charges to assess costs incurred due to prescription drug/opioid hospitalizations

Submitted by elamb on Tue, 03/14/2017 - 20:20

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