Experts: Opioid Problem Difficult but Solvable (MedPage Today)

Monday Feb 26th, 2018

Healthcare professionals can improve patient screening for opioid abuse and better identify patients with opioid use disorder, experts said here Friday, recognizing that these efforts will be difficult. 

Baltimore health commissioner Leana Wen, MD, said naloxone is one immediately available answer to the problem of overdose deaths. While she has increased naloxone administration in Baltimore, she lamented that the medication is not used more often nationally. "It's so frustrating because we know what works," she said. "It's so easy, I cannot understand why we don't do it more ... We are rationing Narcan."

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When I’ve asked experts about these approaches, it’s not that any of them are bad. It’s that they fall short. For instance, Leana Wen, the former health commissioner of Baltimore (and soon-to-be president of Planned Parenthood), said that the Support for Patients and Communities Act “is simply tinkering around the edges.”

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