Hospitals Provide Insufficient Interventions For Opioid Overdose Survivors

In its “Shots” blog, NPR (8/22, Hsu) reports that in cases of non-fatal overdoses, not enough is being done “during hospital encounters” to intervene in patients’ opioid addictions, according to a study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study found that “among people who had overdosed on heroin, the filling of opioid prescriptions fell by 3.5 percent, while medication-assisted treatment increased by only 3.6 percent,” following their hospitalizations.

HealthDay (8/22, Reinberg) reports that the study covered “more than 6,000 people who survived an overdose from an opioid.” The study’s lead author, Julie Donahue, said, “Forty percent of those with a heroin overdose and 60 percent of those with a prescription opioid overdose filled a prescription in the six months after overdose for the very kind of medication that contributed to the overdose in the first place.”

Related Links:

— “Hospitals Could Do More For Survivors Of Opioid Overdoses, Study Suggests,” Andrea Hsu, NPR, August 22, 2017.

Posted in In The News.