After Opioid Overdose Emergency, Few Patients Receive Timely Follow-up
An opioid overdose is significantly more than an isolated event. Patients who present to the emergency department (ED) with overdose have a 6 percent risk of dying in the following year. As with other high-risk acute conditions, we expect patients who survive overdose to receive evidence-based treatment after leaving the hospital. Whether the overdose was due to prescription […]
Overdose and Re-hospitalization Rates Following Endocarditis Are Lower for Patients Receiving Medications for Opioid Use Disorder
The proportion of hospital admissions for endocarditis attributable to injection drug use increased from 7% in 2000 to 12% in 2013. Endocarditis is an infection in the lining of the heart chambers and valves that can be contracted through shared injection equipment. Rates of endocarditis are disproportionately affecting young people who inject drugs (PWID), which has […]
Will Eliminating Waiver Requirements Improve Access to Buprenorphine for Treating Opioid Use Disorder? Evidence From Increasing the Patient Treatment Cap
The Drug Addiction Treatment Act of 2000 (DATA 2000) permits qualified physicians to obtain a waiver to treat patients with opioid use disorder (OUD) with buprenorphine in office-based practices. In 2016, 47% of all US counties and 72% of rural counties lacked a buprenorphine waivered physician. That year, the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act extended buprenorphine prescribing […]
Hospital Financial Incentives to Improve Care After Opioid Overdose
Early analysis of Pennsylvania’s program Two patients are treated for opioid overdose at two different hospitals, just a few miles apart. The first hospital provides life-saving treatment to reverse the overdose and watches the patient for an hour, discharging them when deemed “medically stable.” The second hospital also provides life-saving treatment but then offers counseling, […]
Increased number of children entering the foster care due to parental drug use
In a recent study published in JAMA Pediatrics, CHERISH Pilot Grant Recipient Angelica Meinhofer examined national trends in foster care entries attributable to parental drug use between 2000 and 2017. There were approximately 5 million foster care entries between 2000 and 2017, 23.38% percent of which were attributable to parental drug use. Moreover, the number of […]
No Safe Dose for That First Opioid Prescription
LDI Senior Fellows Zack Meisel, Benjamin Sun, and colleagues have a striking and sobering chart in a recent Annals of Emergency Medicine article on initial opioid prescriptions in the emergency department. They tracked how many “opioid-naïve” patients (i.e., those without a record of opioid use in the previous year) had persistent or high-risk opioid prescription use in the subsequent […]
Buprenorphine for Opioid Use Disorder Lowers Overdose Risk in Commercially Insured Individuals
“Medications for opioid use disorder saves lives.” That’s the title and conclusion of a recent report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, based on a review of the scientific evidence. In a new study in Drug and Alcohol Dependence, CHERISH investigators Jake Morgan, Bruce Schackman and Benjamin Linas add to this evidence base by […]
Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome and the Opioid Crisis: Paying Attention to Social Context
As you likely continue to read in your local news or experience in your community, the United States is in the midst of a deadly drug overdose and addiction crisis. In fact, overdoses claimed the lives of 70,000 individuals in 2017—more than two-thirds of those overdoses were linked to opioids. While drug overdoses disproportionately affect young adults, there […]
Using the 340B Drug Pricing Program to Support Primary Care-Based Hepatitis C Treatment in a Safety-Net Hospital Patient-Centered Medical Home
Over 2 million people in the US had chronic hepatitis C (HCV) infection during 2013- 2016, and HCV remains a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the United States. Expanding HCV treatment in primary care would improve treatment access and follow-up but is resource intensive, requiring significant staff support. Using a budget impact analysis, a new study […]
Naloxone Sales Likely to Increase after Switch to Over-the-Counter Status
Naloxone is an opioid antagonist rescue medication that reverses the effects of an opioid overdose, and thus a critical tool to prevent fatal opioid overdoses. CHERISH Investigators Drs. Sean Murphy, Jake Morgan, and Bruce Schackman, and CHERISH staff member Philip Jeng, MS predicted pharmacy sales following conversion of naloxone to over-the-counter (OTC) in a new […]
Opioids and Hepatitis C: How OxyContin Fed a New Epidemic
Purdue Pharma’s 2010 reformulation of OxyContin as an abuse-resistant pill was supposed to be a breakthrough in battling the burgeoning opioid epidemic. Purdue executives and policymakers touted the reformulation as a way to dampen the supply of abusable drugs, thereby reducing opioid addiction and death. Nearly a decade later, it appears that the policy had several serious […]
Criminal Justice Measures for Economic Data Harmonization in Substance Use Disorder Research
The intersection of criminal justice-involved populations and people who use substances makes criminal justice outcomes particularly significant for estimating the economic impact of substance use disorder interventions. New National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) HEAL initiative funding opportunities in response to the opioid crisis include integrated studies that will develop, test, and validate evidence-based approaches to preventing […]
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