Mercy Health ER program holds hope for OD victims

In the ongoing war on drugs, hospital emergency rooms often stand as the first line of defense for victims. The quality of care in those ERs literally can make life-or-death differences.

Even though the scope of the drug epidemic is beginning to recede in some areas locally and statewide as measured in the number of accidental deaths, hospital emergency departments continue to be overwhelmed with overdose cases.

In 2018, for example, 489 people from the 44507 ZIP Code neighborhood on Youngstown’s South Side received treatment in Mahoning County emergency rooms for drug- overdose or drug-withdrawal symptoms, according to the 2019 Mahoning County Overdose Surveillance Report from the District Board of Health.

Also last year, 117 people died from unintentional drug overdoses in Mahoning County, which represents a slight increase over the 112 such deaths recorded in 2017. Though the number of fatalities did remain relatively stable, it is disconcerting that the county bucked noteworthy trends of reductions in OD deaths last year. In Trumbull County, for example, data from the county Coroner’s Office show OD fatalities dropped from 135 in 2017 to 76 last year, a 44 percent decline.

Nonetheless, 76 such deaths are unacceptable. Even one preventable overdose death is one too many.

That’s why a $250,000 grant awarded this month to the Mahoning County Mental Health and Recovery Board from Ohio’s State Opiate Response agency holds promise in both the immediate battles and in the strategic fights in the war on drug abuse.

Specifically, the grant will be awarded to Mercy Health emergency departments in the county to dispense buprenorphine – a far-less intensive opioid than heroin used in medication-assisted treatment for overdose or withdrawal patients.

Landmark study

Mercy Health’s and the county’s strategy commendably follows recommendations of a landmark study released last summer by the prestigious National Institutes of Health and published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine. It concluded that medication-assisted treatments for opiate use disorder (OUD) are grossly underused in this country.

The study found that a nonfatal opioid overdose treated in the emergency department is an extremely critical time to identify and begin short- and long-range rehabilitation for people with OUD.

The authors of the study analyzed data from 17,568 adults in Massachusetts who survived an opioid overdose between 2012 and 2014. Compared with those who did not receive medication- assisted treatment, opioid overdose deaths decreased by 38 percent for those receiving buprenorphine over the 12-month follow-up period.

Buprenorphine, along with methadone and naltrexone, are the three medications approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat OUD.

A second benefit of the new Mercy Health emergency department program lies in its appropriate focus on the long-term future for OUD patients once they’re released.

In addition to receiving the medication-assisted treatment, patients also will be linked immediately with recovery specialists and substance-abuse programs. The sooner such consistent treatment and rehabilitation can begin, the more likely patients are to stick with the program, said Dr. Chad Donley, regional medical director for Mercy Health emergency departments.

Let’s face it. For far too many drug abusers, emergency rooms have become little more than revolving doors through which repeat OD victims pass through time and time and time again, until, for many of them, it takes death to finally close that door firmly shut.

Fortunately, because local, state and federal initiatives to counsel, treat and rehabilitate illicit drug users have snowballed in number and in quality in recent years, emergency-room staffs will have a robust network of resources at the ready.

Our one advisory to those implementing the opioid-dispensation program would be to ensure it is strictly regulated to guard against any potential abuse or any inappropriate dispensation of the drug.

We’ll hold Dr. Donley to his word when he says, “It’s not going to be a walk-in opioid clinic.”

To be sure, the new ER program offers promise as one of many innovative and compassionate tools to lower the still disturbingly high toll of overdose deaths in our Valley, state and nation. It also illustrates that plenty of room still remains to seek and find fresh and workable strategies to help restore health and wholeness to the lives of the monstrous epidemic’s victims