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When you turn a MEDICAL PROBLEM over to LAW ENFORCEMENT to take care of … you get a LAW ENFORCEMENT SOLUTION. Which will never solve a medical problem… but.. will guarantee LAW ENFORCEMENT continued EMPLOYMENT.
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_T4#
This poster (from around 1938) reads: “60,000 Reichsmark is what this person suffering from a hereditary defect costs the People’s community during his lifetime. Fellow citizen, that is your money too. Read ‘[A] New People‘, the monthly magazine of the Bureau for Race Politics of the NSDAP.”
Action T4 (German: Aktion T4, pronounced [akˈtsi̯oːn teː fiːɐ]) was the postwar designation for a programme of forced euthanasia in wartime Nazi Germany.[2] The name T4 is an abbreviation of Tiergartenstraße 4, a street address of the Chancellery department set up in spring 1940 in the Berlin borough of Tiergarten, which recruited and paid personnel associated with T4.[3][4] Under the programme German physicians were directed to sign off patients “incurably sick, by critical medical examination” and then administer to them a “mercy death” (German: Gnadentod).[5] In October 1939 Adolf Hitler signed a “euthanasia decree” backdated to 1 September 1939 that authorized Reichsleiter Philipp Bouhler, the chief of his Chancellery,[6] and Dr. Karl Brandt, Hitler’s personal physician, to carry out the programme of involuntary euthanasia (translated as follows):
Reich Leader Bouhler and Dr. Brandt are entrusted with the responsibility of extending the authority of physicians, designated by name, so that patients who, on the basis of human judgment [menschlichem Ermessen], are considered incurable, can be granted mercy death [Gnadentod] after a definitive diagnosis. — Adolf Hitler
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WASHINGTON – Insurers will seek significant premium hikes under President Barack Obama’s health care law this summer – stiff medicine for consumers and voters ahead of the national political conventions.
Expect the state-by-state premium requests to reflect what insurers see as the bottom line: The health law has been a financial drain for many companies. They’re setting the stage for 2017 hikes that could reach well into the double digits, in some cases.
For example, in Virginia, a state that reports early, nine insurers returning to the HealthCare.gov marketplace are seeking average premium increases that range from 9.4 percent to 37.1 percent. Those initial estimates filed with the state may change.
More than 12 million people nationwide get coverage though the health law’s markets, which offer subsidized private insurance. But the increases could also affect several million who purchase individual policies outside the government system.
Going into their fourth year, the health law’s markets are still searching for stability. That’s in contrast to more-established government programs like Medicaid and Medicare Advantage, in which private insurers profitably cover tens of millions of people.
The health law’s nagging problems center on lower-than-hoped-for enrollment, sicker-than-expected customers, and a balky internal stabilization system that didn’t deliver as advertised and was already scheduled to be pared back next year.
This year, premiums for a benchmark silver plan rose by a little more than 7 percent on average, according to administration figures. A spike for 2017 would fire up the long-running political debate over the divisive law, which persists despite two Supreme Court decisions upholding Obama’s signature program, and the president’s veto of a Republican repeal bill.
Of the presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton is the only one promising to build on the Affordable Care Act. She’s proposed an aggressive effort to increase enrollment along with measures to reduce consumer costs. The Republican candidates all want to repeal “Obamacare.” Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders would incorporate it into a bigger government-run system covering everyone.
The health law is “likely in for a significant market correction over the next year or two,” said Larry Levitt of the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. “There have been a lot of signals from insurers that premiums are headed up.”
Standard & Poor’s health insurance analyst Deep Banerjee said he expects premium hikes to be higher for 2017 than in the larger, more stable market for employer coverage. Insurers are facing higher medical costs from health law customers, and some companies priced their initial coverage too low in an attempt to grab new business.
“What they are doing now is trying to catch up,” said Banerjee.
Aetna chairman and CEO Mark Bertolini said Thursday the nation’s third-largest health insurer still sees a good business opportunity, but Congress needs to provide leeway for companies to design lower-cost plans tailored to young, healthy people.
“We will see the dynamics of the market get tougher as we go forward if we don’t get those kinds of structural changes,” he said. How that would happen in a politically polarized atmosphere, Bertolini did not explain.
Aetna lost more than $100 million on its health law business last year but hopes to break even this year.
The administration says talk of premium increases is premature and overblown. Initial requests from insurers will get knocked back in some states, officials say, aided by a rate-review process strengthened under the health law.
Most significantly, more than 8 out of 10 customers in the health law’s markets get subsidies to help pay their premiums, and that financial assistance will increase as premiums rise. Many have also shown they’re willing to shop around for lower-priced coverage.
“Marketplace consumers would do well to put little stock in initial rate filings,” spokesman Ben Wakana said in a statement. “Averages based on proposed premium changes are not a reliable indicator of what typical consumers will actually pay.”
Also mitigating the pressure for higher premiums is a one-year moratorium — for 2017 — on a health law tax on insurers, part of last year’s federal budget deal.
Still, it’s hard to ignore the litany of insurer complaints.
Last month, an analysis of medical claims from the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association concluded that insurers gained a sicker, more expensive patient population as a result of the law. The “Blues” represent the most common brand of insurance.
Recently, UnitedHealth, the nation’s biggest insurer, said it will radically pull back from the health law markets, citing estimated losses of $650 million this year, on top of $475 million it lost last year.
Many insurers struggled because they didn’t know how much medical care their new customers would use. Some patients had been out of the health care system for years and had been holding off getting needed care. Insurers also say they’ve been hurt by customers who signed up outside the regular enrollment period and then used a lot of services.
Insurers who are more bullish on the program tend to be ones that expanded slowly into the markets and have a lot of experience working with low-income Medicaid recipients.
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Walgreens Tells its Customers to Consider Medical Cannabishttps://www.newcannabisventures.com/walgreens-tells-its-customers-to-consider-medical-cannabis/
Chris Male of Anslinger Capital shared something today with our almost 4000 member LinkedIn group, Cannabis Investors & Entrepreneurs, that was just too good to be true. I dismissed it incorrectly as fake news, but indeed it is true: Walgreens (NASDAQ: WBA) sent out a blast email on April 26th discussing medical cannabis. The piece, “What is Medical Marijuana? Clarifying Clinical Cannabis“, was written by Dahlia Sultan, PharmD, Resident Pharmacist, Walgreens and the University of Illinois at Chicago.
She shares basic information about medical cannabis that won’t be surprising to those who are familiar with the potential medical benefits, but it actually suggested that those wanting more information should “talk to your doctor”.
If you’d like more information about the use of medical marijuana, talk with your doctor.
I can’t recall any S&P 500 company ever sharing such a supportive view, especially one that is involved in the lives of so many people who count on it for advice on health and wellness. Sultan also calls out many medical conditions for which medical cannabis may be appropriate, including cancer pain management, Parkinson’s, Tourette’s Syndrome, Alzheimer’s, Schizophrenia, Cardiovascular disorders, palliative care and Glaucoma. Wow!
Interestingly, while most people consider smoking to be the most common method, as the article acknowledges, Sultan points to alternative delivery systems, including capsules, vaporization, liquid extracts and edibles. She points to potential side effects like dizziness and short-term memory loss, but she concludes with advice on how to get a prescription. Again, I have to say wow! Pharmacies in Canada have expressed a desire to get involved in the country’s medical cannabis program. Is Walgreens smelling a huge opportunity?
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http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/chyna-s-death-was-accidental-overdose-medication-manager-n563816
Chyna’s manager said Wednesday he believes the pioneer wrestling star died of an accidental overdose of Ambien and Valium.
“She accidentally and unintentionally misused her legally prescribed medication over the course of 2-3 weeks. It’s an epidemic,” manager Anthony Anzaldo said in an email.
Chyna, born Joanie Laurer, was billed by the WWE as the “Ninth Wonder of the World” during her wrestling career. The Los Angeles Times first reported the manager’s comments.
Chyna died last week at age 46 in her Redondo Beach, California, home.
The Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner has not yet ruled on a cause of death. It said a ruling is deferred pending additional investigation.
Coroner’s office Assistant Chief Ed Winter said full test results aren’t expected back for the next couple of months. “It is not closed,” Winter said of the case.
“It’s premature to give a cause of death on a case that the final tests are not in yet,” Winter said.
Anzaldo said Chyna died after falling asleep April 17 and that he found her at 3:30 p.m. April 20 after being unable to contact her.
“She fell asleep on Sunday night and peacefully took her last breath,” Anzaldo said. He said there were no alcohol or drugs, legal or illegal, at the scene.
The Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner has not yet ruled on a cause of death. It said a ruling is deferred pending additional investigation.
Laurer was a female pioneer in the male-dominated sport of professional wrestling during the mid- to late-1990s, becoming the first woman to compete in the WWF Royal Rumble. She was also the first woman to become an Intercontinental Champion in 1999 and again in 2000.
Wrestling legend Hulk Hogan called her a “beautiful soul.” Stephanie McMahon, chief brand officer for WWE, hailed her as a “pioneer.”
The wrestler-turned-reality TV star and, later, adult film actress found fitness as an escape from a difficult childhood, according to the bio on her official website.
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The DEA and various law enforcement agencies are having “drug take back days” trying to get people to clean out their medicine cabinet and toss their “old meds”.. they quote the TONS of medications that they collect… but.. no one keeps track of unused antibiotics, eye/ear drops and controlled substances.. but they always REPORT the TONS of medication that are collected.. suggesting that it is all controlled meds.
Some of the chain drug stores are putting in permanent “take-back drug boxes” in hopes of getting more unused medications out of homes. How much they will collect and/or if they collect any controlled medications at all is yet to be determined.
Likewise, by the end of the year all – or nearly all states – will have passed laws making Naloxone capable of being sold OTC. I have already seen one WV bureaucrat boasting that they had REVIVED ONE PERSON on SIX SEPARATE OCCASIONS
They are already boasting about how many doses of Naloxone that has been administered.. suggesting of how many lives they have SAVED.
It has been reported that the CDC has been counting each substance in a deceased person’s toxicology report as a separate cause of death.. so a SINGLE PERSON’S death can be counted multiple times toward the total number of deaths from various substance abuse.
Just wait until 2018 gets here and the data for 2017 starts getting reported… the total number of doses of Naloxone administered will skyrocket, the number of “opiate related deaths” will continue to increase.. the TONS of medications “reclaimed” and disposed of will dramatically increase..
We may be looking at the total number of people abusing some substances may increase because of the liberal availability and use of Naloxone and the developing use of Naloxone is nothing more than a “catch and release” program.. there is little/nothing in place to help these people to start a recovery process.
PREDICTION: As 2018 unfolds, we will probably see the bureaucrats start searching for a NEW METHODOLOGY to stop substance abuse.
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http://wtop.com/health/2016/04/pure-caffeine-even-a-teaspoon-of-powder-can-be-fatal/
Every coffee drinker knows that too many cups can give you the jitters, but too much pure caffeine can be fatal within just minutes. One teaspoon of powdered pure caffeine is the equivalent of 25 cups of coffee.
Logan Stiner’s parents said he was just four days away from his high school graduation when he died from a caffeine overdose. The high school wrestling star was set to graduate fourth in his class and go on to study chemical engineering in the fall. His parents had never even heard of powdered caffeine and now they are personally lobbying the FDA to ban the substance.
“We didn’t know how much of it was circulating around, didn’t know what it was, never heard of it, and we thought we were pretty in the know,” his mother Kate Stiner told ABC News.
Concentrated caffeine can easily be purchased online as a powder, liquid or even an inhaler, and is often advertised as a health supplement, with little or no warning about its potency.
Lawmakers and advocates are calling on the FDA to ban concentrated caffeine products, saying there is no way they can be sold or consumed safely. They note it’s impossible to measure out the recommended dose of 1/16 teaspoon.
The parents of another victim, 24-year-old Wade Sweatt, said he died after going into a coma just minutes after trying the powder for the first time. On his phone, they found he had been Googling conversion charts trying to determine how much to take.
“It’s like an explosive, a catastrophe waiting to happen,” Sen Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told reporters Tuesday.
After Stiner and Sweatt died from caffeine overdoses in 2014, the FDA met with their families and began warning consumers against pure powdered caffeine.
The agency issued warning letters to five companies last year and all five have since stopped selling the bulk product, but other manufacturers still sell it online. A simple search shows dozens of options available both from foreign companies and domestic producers. Most are inexpensive and with no more warning than the words “use sparingly” on the label. The FDA issued a warning to a Minnesota-based company selling caffeine just last month.
Laura MacCleery is the director of regulatory affairs for an advocacy group that joined the senators and families to petition the FDA. She said it’s unclear exactly how many cases of caffeine overdose there are because most people don’t think of caffeine as dangerous and a fatal overdose can look just like a heart attack. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that dietary supplements send more than 23,000 people to the hospital every year. The FDA said Tuesday it has received no reports of adverse events since warning letters were sent out to five caffeine producers in August 2015.
Lawmakers say it is a “bitter disappointment” that the FDA has not moved more quickly on this issue and fear only more deaths will spur them to completely ban pure caffeine products.
Senators Sherrod Brown and Dick Durbin joined Blumenthal in calling on the FDA Tuesday to ban these products, saying that there is too much risk to wait for slower regulations. The FDA did not comment on a potential ban but said in a statement after the press conference that the agency will continue to monitor the market for dangerous products and encouraged Poison Control Centers to report calls related to caffeine to help consider future regulations.
Some states like Ohio and Illinois have banned pure caffeine products at a state level, but the senators said that anything below the federal level is practically impossible to enforce.
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http://mtpr.org/post/pain-helped-him-pull-trigger#stream/0
Imagine what would happen if a person called up a physician’s practice or emergency room and said that they needed to be seen/treated for some life threatening disease … and was told that they didn’t treat people with a life threatening disease ?
Recently a pain clinic in South Bend was found guilty of discriminating against a pain pt.. for refusing to treat the pt’s pain… not because of denial of care of his pain.. but.. refusal to treat the pt because of his HIV + status.
The pain clinic was FINED $30,000 of which the pt got $20,000. Would the outcome have been the same if the pt did not have HIV and just treatment of the pt’s pain had been involved ?
This case was handled TOTALLY by the US DOJ… Is the DOJ telling us that those who are handicapped/disabled because of pain… not worthy of protection under the ADA ? Is the DOJ discriminating against those that they are sworn to protect under the ADA ?
When Bob Mason decided to end his life with a self-inflicted gunshot, his pain helped him pull the trigger.
Mason died in January. He was 67 years old. His daughter, Shane Mieski, says her father had been without pain-killing drugs for about a week when he died.
“For the last couple weeks up until Bob passed away, there were a lot of tears everyday on the phone,” Mieski said, “between the pain and really just the sadness of not being able to walk his dog, which, I’m sure it was more than that. There would be tears, then he would joke,” she said, “then he’d call back an hour later and be teary and in pain again.”
One of Mason’s doctors was Mark Ibsen in Helena. Ibsen shut his practice last winter, after being investigated by the Montana Board of Medical Examiners for over-prescribing the powerful and addictive painkillers known as opioids.
That meant Bob Mason lost his access to the painkillers he needed to make his life bearable. Mieski says she remembers her dad talking about seeing another doctor in Butte to get relief. But he was in too much pain to make the trip from his home in Helena.
“An hour down and an hour back, it was too painful,” Mieski said. “He would wince every time he sat down, and cringe, and I swear I could hear his back creaking every time he stood up.”
In March a group of chronic pain patients in Montana presented what they call a “pain patient’s bill of rights” to the state legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee. Terri Anderson from Hamilton was one of them.
“On behalf of all those who suffer pain, and Robert Mason, who took his own life because of uncontrolled pain,” Anderson said to the committee. “We are a diverse group of patients,” she said. “We come from all walks of life, and we believe the treatment of our chronic intractable pain is a fundamental human right.”
Anderson says the pain patient’s bill of rights is based on similar legislation in California. Lawmakers there found that the state has a right and duty to control the illegal use of opioid drugs. They also found that for some patients, inadequate treatment of acute and chronic pain is a significant health problem.
California’s pain patient’s bill of rights allows a patient to request or reject the use of any or all techniques in order to relieve their pain.
According to The Montana Medical Association, prescription drugs contributed to more than 300 deaths in Montana between 2011 and 2013. The Association says kids in Montana have the third highest prescription drug abuse rate in the country.
“Opioids were given out like jelly beans,” Pain Patient Advocate Terri Anderson acknowledges. “People did become addicted, and [there were] too many deaths from these prescribing habits. But the pendulum has swung, and the legitimate pain patients cannot get their medications. Especially in Montana.”
California’s first version of the pain patient’s bill of rights became law in 1997.
Los Angeles area doctor Forest Tennant advocated for it. He now treats patients who come from states all over the country – including Montana – who can’t find effective pain treatment at home.
“The last week or two has just been unbearable,” he said. “We hardly want to take the phones, [because of] the number of people calling that want to come here.”
“A lot of it is, doctors in other states don’t want to treat anybody,” Tennant says.
“We’ve been at this since World War II, when we had a lot of sailors and soldiers settle here. And so, in California, believe it or not, we have the lowest per-capita prescribing of schedule-2 opioids. That’s because we’ve been at training and programs for decades.”
To an untrained doctor, Tennant says, addicts and pain patients can look similar. He says education in the medical community about pain management and opioids is almost nonexistent.
“Here is the thing the public doesn’t get,” he says. “The government doesn’t get it, the universities don’t get it, and I don’t know why this is so hard to understand.
“The CDC has got these guidelines. All they do is reiterate what is standard care anyway,” Tennant says. “In other words, you have standard care. That’s non-pharmacological medication, physical therapy, injections, surgery, topical medications, psychotherapy – and all of those things have to be tried before a patient can come here. Opioids are not an option; they are the last resort when there is no other option. You don’t use them until everything else has failed. Big myth. Big misunderstanding.”
Doctor Marc Mentel chairs a Montana Medical Association committee on prescription drug abuse.
“I know nationally there is a big move to regulate these medicines, and have tighter regulations, and right now legislation is being considered,” Metel says. “A lot of us are proposing [that] education is really what we need to do. The opioid problem is a big problem in the U.S. and we have to face it and take it head-on. But at the same point in time, as we take that on, we don’t want to throw out patients who also suffer from chronic pain and may benefit from these medicines. And some of them leave with actually better quality of life with them being available.”
Mentel testified at the Montana legislative committee hearing on the pain patient’s bill of rights in March.
“Right now the exact means and ability to know what is the best way to manage chronic pain, what are the tools available, what is available out there? We are still developing the science,” Mentel told the committee.
“A pain patient’s bill of rights – although I agree with everything that is on there that they are talking about today, I agree with them wholeheartedly, it is actually in my oath I took as a physician to treat everyone as if I would want to be treated myself. I’m just fearful that a bill of rights, or some mandates for physicians to practice in a certain way, could get legislation ahead of the science.”
“What I think is important is that we have the discussion,” says state Senator Mary Caferro, “and if I as a legislator can in anyway assist with that, I’m going to do it.”
The Helena Democrat says she’ll put in a bill draft request for the 2017 legislative session, but she isn’t sure yet if she’ll be a formal sponsor for a pain patient’s bill of rights.
“Drug addiction is a problem, it is a very serious problem,” Caferro says. “What I don’t want to see happen, and what has been identified as a problem, is that people who really need access to medication get swept up in the drug addiction. They are two separate issues. You have drug addiction, and you have people who need medicine for their pain management. Those are two separate issues.”
Bob Mason, the pain patient from Helena who committed suicide, moved to Montana to try to get relief in 2012. He got a spinal cord stimulator implant, but afterwards, still needed opioids.
His daughter, Shane Mieski, said he didn’t like the drugs, but there were no other options.
“The opioids, they cause other issues,” Mieski says. “Your body starts to feel slow and a little overwhelmed, as he would mention. You don’t feel super sharp and on top of your game. At a certain point, there was nothing more that doctors could do for his type of pain. So, as a 67-year-old person, I think that you should try to enjoy any quality of life you get. And if that means taking medication to function, give them what they need.”
Opium-derived drugs are a two-headed beast. One clenches its jaws around addicts, whose lives it can crush. The other offers relief that can make life worth living, at least for long enough to allow a man like Bob Mason to feel like he can walk his dog.
The American Academy of Pain Medicine says a hundred million Americans suffer with chronic pain. That’s more than the number of people with diabetes, heart disease, and cancer combined.
Read the first part of this series on pain patients’ access to opioid painkillers in Montana.
This story was made possible, in part, by a grant from the Montana Health Care Foundation.
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http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/04/cost_of_narcan_shoots_up_christies_ag_takes_notice.html
The state attorney general’s office will look into the soaring retail price of the heroin overdose antidote Narcan, acting Attorney General Robert Lougy told NJ Advance Media on Monday.
Appearing at Hoboken University Medical Center Monday afternoon at a training session for friends and family members who might need to administer the opioid antidote to drug abusers who’d overdosed, Gov. Chris Christie touted Narcan as a crucial first step in getting people from addiction to detox.
“Narcan has saved thousands of lives in New Jersey,” Christie said. “People who otherwise would have died of an overdose if someone hadn’t been prepared and trained with the antidote.”
The Republican governor noted that some 1,400 individuals had been trained in administering Narcan in the last five months alone, and that it had been deployed nearly 11,000 times since a statewide effort to make it available to all first responders in 2014.
But as Narcan has become increasingly prevalent, its cost has soared both in New Jersey and nationwide, attracting the attention of state attorneys general and Congress.
In March 2014, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick changed his state’s regulations to make Narcan more widely available to first responders. Three months later, Christie followed suit with his own plan to expand access to the antidote state-wide in New Jersey in June 2014.
Soon after Patrick took action, the price of Narcan doubled in Massachusetts, leaping from less than $15 to more than $30 per dose, according to the office of Maura Healey, that state’s attorney general.
“It increased rapidly and inexplicably,” Cyndi Roy Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for Healey, said Monday.
With an eye towards expanding access to the life-saving antidote, last June Christie’s then-acting attorney general John Hoffman negotiated an agreement with Narcan drug manufacturer Amphastar Pharmaceuticals, Inc. under which Amphastar would refund New Jersey $6 per dose sold to qualifying agencies.
But as Amphastar is the only drug company that makes a type of Narcan that can be administered nasally, its price ballooned, along with Amphastar’s revenues, which reached $53 million for the three months ending June 2015.
Christie: Trump adviser? Shrink? Both, he says
Gov. Chris Christie is heard far more than he is seen with Donald Trump.
In the summer of 2015, towns and cities in Massachusetts were paying between $33 and $66 per dose until its attorney general threatened to sue and reached a $325,000 settlement with the drug-maker last September.
Thomas F. Molta, the president of Hoboken’s Volunteer Ambulance Corps, said that “on average, it costs approximately $43.00 per dose” for each dose of Narcan.
Molta added that “as a volunteer agency every dollar we can save is important to us,” but that he’d not heard about New Jersey’s rebate agreement with Amphastar.
Unlike New Jersey’s agreement with Amphastar, the first-of-its kind settlement struck with Massachusetts created a state-run bulk purchase fund for Narcan that combine a $325,000 payment from the drug-maker with $150,000 in subsidies from Massachusetts’ state coffers.
As a result, first responders in Massachusetts can now buy Narcan at $20 per dose, without any paperwork or waiting for rebates.
When Christie was asked about the Narcan price increases on Monday, and whether they merited revisiting New Jersey’s agreement from last June, the governor answered simply, “Don’t know.”
But Lougy, the governor’s newly-appointed acting attorney general, told NJ Advance Media that his office, which operates independently of the governor’s, will be taking a closer look both at his predecessor’s agreement with Amphastar and the pharmaceutical company’s rationale for its explosive Narcan pricing hikes.
Meanwhile, the cost of Narcan continues to soar in other nearby states, like Maryland.
“In May 2014, a 10-dose pack (of Narcan) cost the Baltimore City Health Department roughly $190,” said U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland in his opening remarks at a House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing on the heroin epidemic last month. “Guess what? Today, it costs more than $400 for a life-saving drug.”
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(Harrisburg) — Getting a true sense of the impact of the opioid crisis is difficult in Pennsylvania.
WITF has reported that the state doesn’t have up-to-date, accurate information.
But one professor is making an effort to provide more help.
Professor Jeanine Buchanich at the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health is examining death certificates from 1999 to 2015.
She’s hoping to gather information about what drugs contributed to each overdose death, where the overdose occurred, and demographic details like age, sex, and perhaps even job status.
Buchanich says she may be able to tear down some stereotypes with her work.
“I think we may. Honestly, I think there could be some surprising pieces of information that we are able to tease out with the detail and level of information that we have with this data,” says Buchanich.
But she recognizes the state has no one standard for county coroners to classify a drug overdose.
“We are of course limited, to the extent that medical examiners and coroners are putting information on to the death certificate, so only if heroin is noted on the death certificate with it get a heroin code for example,” she adds.
State agencies don’t have up-to-date, accurate statistics on drug overdoses either.
Although a private group has provided more detailed information in the past two years, it’s still incomplete.
The information is critical because it is used to develop solutions to the drug overdose crisis.
Public health experts have frequently cited the need for accurate, up-to-date statistics to get a handle on the drug overdose crisis.
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