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More on the opioid crisis and the fentanyl factor

Wednesday, May 4th, 2016

Here in the state where the world headquarters of Lynch Ryan is housed, we learn the unsettling news that Massachusetts has seen a 190% increase in opioid deaths in five years. Jessica Bartlett of Boston Business Journal notes:

“Despite Gov. Charlie Baker releasing a $27 million plan to address the opioid epidemic in June, opioid deaths have continued to rise, with recent data from the Department of Public Health showing a 12.5 percent increase in estimated deaths in 2015 compared to the year before.

Compared to just five years ago, the estimated 1,526 unintentional opioid-related deaths in 2015 represents a 190 percent increase.”

Things might have been even worse. In 2015, the “opioid antagonist” Naloxone was administered 12,982 times, so we can only guess what the tally might have been without such intervention. It doesn’t look like 2016 will bring much relief: An estimated 400 deaths have have already occurred in the first three months of the year.

Bartlett notes a disturbing trend:

“While the high number of deaths is nothing new, the state has for the first time released the number of deaths with a confirmed presence of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine.

Of the 1,319 confirmed opioid deaths in 2015, 754 of them tested positive for fentanyl.”

Felice J. Freyer and J.D. Capelouto recently reported on this in the Boston Globe: Fentanyl factored in more than half of 2015 OD deaths, state reports

A Massachusetts law criminalizing fentanyl trafficking took effect in February, with sentences of up to 20 years in prison for selling more than 10 grams.

The health department data released Monday provide the most reliable portrait to date of the opioid crisis in 2015, confirming that 1,379 people died from overdoses. A deeper analysis of cases from 2014 raised the number of confirmed fatal overdoses for that year, to 1,282.

The state’s findings do not distinguish between heroin overdoses and those caused by prescription opioids. Health officials are unable to make that distinction because most prescription opioids, as well as heroin, break down into morphine in the bloodstream. But fentanyl, a synthetic drug, turns into a substance that can be detected by a test.

Southern California Public Radio features a story on Why it’s so hard to track the powerful opioid fentanyl. Rebecca Plevin reports:

First, doctors treating overdose victims are mainly looking for the better-known opioids, like Vicodin. And when they check for drugs, standard tests often miss fentanyl. A special lab analysis is often necessary, and doctors – especially in busy ER’s – don’t always think of that. Another problem is that not all hospitals are set up to conduct the special lab analysis.

All of this is complicated by the fact that illegally manufactured fentanyl may be mixed with heroin or counterfeit pills that look like normal prescription medications, so people may not be aware that they’re exposing themselves to the drug.

The rise in fentanyl use has health officials particularly worried, given its tremendous potency. To try to get a handle on the problem, the state has asked all local hospitals to report suspected fentanyl overdoses. State officials have also asked providers to test for fentanyl when ordering drug screening in cases of suspected overdose.

This is a disturbing news in the worsening opioid crisis. A simple search of Google news will show that officials in Ohio, Pennsylvania and other states are seeing surges in fentanyl overdoses.

In his post Opioids, spines, and dead people, Joe Paduda talks about physicians and prescribing, giving context to the issue:

In a related piece, Michael Van Korff ScD andGary Franklin MD MPH summarize the iatrogenic disaster driven by opioid over-prescribing. Over the last fifteen years, almost 200,000 prescription opioid overdose deaths have occurred in the US, with most deaths from medically-prescribed opioids.

Doctors prescribed opioids that killed well over a hundred thousand people.

Today, about 10 million Americans are using doctor-prescribed opioids; somewhere between 10% – 40% may have prescription opioid use disorder – they may well be addicted.

Van Korff and Franklin note that 60% of overdose fatalities were prescribed dosages greater than a 50 mg morphine equivalent.

In days gone by, drug deaths were primarily associated with illicit or street drugs, but today, it’s prescription drugs – and prescriptions are seen as the gateway to street drugs, rather than the reverse.  We now lose more people annually to drug overdoses than by car crashes or firearms.

In 2013, the most recent year for which data is available, 46,471 people in the United States died from drug overdoses, and more than half of those deaths were caused by prescription painkillers and heroin.

That compares with the 35,369 who died in motor vehicle crashes and 33,636 who died from firearms, as tallied by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Combating the public health scourge of prescription drug-related addiction and deaths will require a concerted effort on all fronts: physicians as prescribers; employers and insurers in the workplace; public health, elected officials and law enforcement in our communities. On that front, there have been some promising approaches in moving from a crime to a treatment approach: Connecticut Cops Consider ‘Angel’ Program to Combat Heroin Scourge

Another approach, pioneered in Gloucester, Massachusetts, shows promise and has been attracting increasing attention around the country. In Connecticut, Groton has adopted it and Manchester is considering a similar program.

Launched on June 1, the Gloucester Angel Initiative makes police the point agency in moving addicts directly into treatment. Addicts are allowed to surrender any drugs and needles they have with the understanding that they will not face arrest and that police and community volunteers called “angels” will help them toward recovery.

About 350 admitted addicts have sought help in Gloucester through the program, department spokesman John Guilfoil said on Jan. 8. As a side benefit, crime fueled by addiction, particularly thefts, dropped 33 percent last summer compared with the summer of 2014, Guilfoil said.

Fifty-three police agencies in the country have adopted similar programs, and two to three more join each week through a partnership called the Police Assisted Addiction and Recovery Initiative, Guilfoil said.

Prior related posts:

 

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Studies: Opioid epidemic grows; Is obesity a smoking gun in rise of prescription drugs?

Wednesday, January 13th, 2016

You may have taken hope from studies that pointed to a decrease or leveling of the rate of deaths related to opioid and prescription drug use in 2012-2013. If so, the Centers for Disease Control wasted no time this year in throwing some cold water on those hopes.

On January 1, via the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), the CDC issued new data on Increases in Drug and Opioid Overdose Deaths — United States, 2000–2014.

                      Age-adjusted rate of drug overdose deaths and drug overdose deaths involving opioids: US 2000–2014

mmwr opioid trends

Here are some of the key findings:

  • During 2014, a total of 47,055 drug overdose deaths occurred in the United States, representing a 1-year increase of 6.5%, from 13.8 per 100,000 persons in 2013 to 14.7 per 100,000 persons in 2014.
  • Rates of opioid overdose deaths also increased significantly, from 7.9 per 100,000 in 2013 to 9.0 per 100,000 in 2014, a 14% increase.
  • In 2014, there were approximately one and a half times more drug overdose deaths in the United States than deaths from motor vehicle crashes
  • The 2014 data demonstrate that the United States’ opioid overdose epidemic includes two distinct but interrelated trends: a 15-year increase in overdose deaths involving prescription opioid pain relievers and a recent surge in illicit opioid overdose deaths, driven largely by heroin.
  • From 2000 to 2014 nearly half a million persons in the United States have died from drug overdoses.
  • The rate of deaths from drug overdoses has increased 137%, including a 200% increase in the rate of overdose deaths involving opioids (opioid pain relievers and heroin).

The 2013-2014 increase was geographically pervasive. In 2014, the five states with the highest rates of drug overdose deaths were:

  • West Virginia (35.5 deaths per 100,000)
  • New Mexico (27.3)
  • New Hampshire (26.2)
  • Kentucky (24.7)
  • Ohio (24.6).

States with statistically significant increases in the rate of drug overdose deaths from 2013 to 2014 included Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

For more analysis of the data, see Kim Krisberg’s story at The Pump Handle.

Obesity: A Smoking Gun?

Is obesity a contributing factor to the opioid epidemic? That’s certainly an avenue worth further investigation. Recent research shows more evidence of the increase in prescription drug use and study authors suggest an obesity connection.

In November, researchers at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health issued a report which was published in in JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association: Trends in Prescription Drug Use Among Adults in the United States From 1999-2012

NPR’s Alison Kodjak reports on the study in Americans Are Using More Prescription Drugs; Is Obesity To Blame?

Two of the key findings:

  • 59% of adults used a prescription drug in a 30-day period, up from 50% a decade earlier.
  • The share of people taking more than five prescription drugs in a month doubled to 15%.

Lead author Elizabeth Kantor said that:

” … the rise in prescription drug use may have to do with the rise in obesity, since many of the most widely prescribed drugs treat obesity-related conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. The study found, for example, that the share of people using cholesterol-lowering agents, mostly statins, jumped from 7% to 17%.”

 

Related opioid reading matter:

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Peter Rousmaniere Takes On The Opioid Controversy And Offers A Prescription For The Future

Monday, June 29th, 2015

Work Comp Central has published We’re Beating Back Opioids – Now What? ,  written by columnist Peter Rousmaniere in cooperation with CompPharma, a consortium of workers’ compensation Pharmacy Benefit Managers.

To say the Mr. Rousmaniere is a “workers’ compensation thought leader” is a little like saying Ted Williams was a pretty good baseball player. In this provocative analysis he expertly  chronicles the increasingly alarming rise in opioid usage to treat work injuries from the early 1990s through the first decade of this century, what he calls “the twenty year crisis.” He describes how Purdue Pharma’s introduction and heavy-handed marketing of Oxycontin in 1996 lit the fuse of the opioid rocket ride to the moon, setting off a series of  cataclysmically destructive personal odysseys on a grand scale. Lives ruined, families torn apart. And he documents the myriad counterattacks mounted by responsible parties around the country, most notably Dr. Gary Franklin, the neurologist and medical director for the Washington State Department of Labor & Industries, who, by anyone’s standard has been a torchbearer in the battle.

Rousmaniere describes how the responsible physician community, recognizing that things were getting more than a little out of control, began to question the effectiveness of opioids in treating pain:

In 2013, the American Medical Association published a review of pain medications, in which it concluded that “Narcotics provide little to no benefit in acute back pain, they have no proven efficacy in chronic back pain, and 43% of patients have concurrent substance abuse disorders, with aberrant medication-taking disorders [in] as high as 24% of cases of chronic back pain.” The “no evidence” concept has been stretched to raise more questions, as in this conclusion published in early 2015: “There is no evidence that opioids improve return to work or reduce the use of other treatments. They may even limit the effectiveness of other treatments.”

Finally, he tells the story of how the federal government as well as almost all the states, the insurance industry, the American Medical Association and workers’ comp pharmacy benefit managers took definitive action to bend the opioid curve to the point where all of the leading indicators have been significantly slowed or reversed.

But Peter Rousmaniere’s report up to this point, the halfway mark, is merely preamble to the real thrust of We’re Beating Back Opioids – Now What? It’s the “Now What?” that concerns Mr. Rousmaniere. The “baby and the bathwater” question. He writes:

The workers’ comp industry was victimized by opioids and their well-resourced purveyors and ardent advocates. But it also made a costly, unforced strategic error. It paid more attention to wrestling with this flawed solution than to the underlying problem: chronic pain.

In short, Rousmaniere says, “We have equated pain management with drug use.” He isn’t shy about making his point:

Too much attention was diverted to fighting the opioid threat. For example, when states introduce hard hitting formularies, such as Texas did and others are doing, hardly any thought is given to making sure patients and physicians have access to a balanced array of non-opioid treatment. This needs to change – now.

Well, chronic pain is real. So, if not with opioids, how should the medical community be treating it?

Rousmaniere’s prescription is an elastic version of conservative care. He describes the approach of California’s second largest private employer, Albertsons / Safeway / Vons, who “learned through experience” that every injured person is a unique individual and that new ideas need to be brought to the recovery process.

For example, it’s almost a cliche  to say that chronic pain sufferers tend to depression as well as other mental and behavioral health issues. Consequently, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, an underused treatment because of its perceived fuzziness, is gaining traction within the world of claims management.  As is the idea of treating injured workers in a biopsychosocial way. And, because opioid treatment is still an option, many in the medical community are saying that before any injured workers receive opioid prescriptions they should be screened for depression.

Rousmaniere argues persuasively that “one size fits all” treatment just doesn’t work for many people and that the solution to this thorniest of workers’ comp problems will take a heretofore unheard of level of cooperation and coordination among and between the industry’s disparate factions. He even goes so far as to compare the effort required to the largest single public infrastructure project in the nation’s history, Boston’s Big Dig. Although, having lived through the Big Dig and its daily remapping of Boston’s streets, that’s a bit of a long pull for me. But I get his point:

The goal of the Big Dig was to improve the livelihood of the Boston metropolis – more than reworking traffic flow. The goal of a chronic pain initiative is to keep workers productive – more than managing drugs.

Peter Rousmaniere’s  We’re Beating Back Opioids – Now What? is a compelling, stimulating and thought provoking work by a person with 30 years in the workers’ comp trenches and the scars to prove it. It should be required reading for anyone whose job it is to help injured workers return to the productive future each deserves.

 

 

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An Opioid Call To Arms

Wednesday, April 30th, 2014

In October, 2013, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allowed the opiate Zohydro ER to come on the market despite its own Advisory Panel voting 11-2 against it because it was not tamper resistant. Twenty-nine state Attorneys General petitioned the FDA to reverse its decision, but the FDA declined to do so, saying that the drug is safe and effective if used as directed.
We chronicled Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick’s Quixote to the Windmill charge as he attempted to ban the sale of the drug in the state. The windmill won when US District Judge Rya W. Zobel overturned the state’s ban. Shortly thereafter, just days before his ban was due to expire, Governor Patrick remounted Rocinante and made a less Quixotic charge: he followed the lead of governors in other states by imposing sweeping restrictions on how Massachusetts doctors prescribe the powerful pain killer, the first pure opiate.
The restrictions, which Zohydro ER’s maker, Zogenix, calls “draconian” and “unjstified,” require that doctors:

  • Evaluate a patient’s substance abuse history and other current medications;
  • Provide a “letter of medical necessity” to the pharmacy;
  • Enter a “pain management treatment agreement” with the patient; and,
  • Use the state’s online Prescription Monitoring Program, which tracks prescriptions of controlled substances, before prescribing drugs like Zohydro that are extended-release medications containing only hydrocodone and do not come in an “abuse-deterrent form.”

Zogenix is fighting back. On Monday, the San Diego-based company filed a federal lawsuit arguing that the Massachusetts new restrictions impose “draconian” mandates on doctors and “amount to an effective ban of the drug” that is unconstitutional.
The Suit asks that the Court vacate any restrictions imposed on the sale of Zohydro ER.
Governor Patrick says that his problem with Zohydro ER is that it does not come with “abuse deterrent” packaging. Zogenix responds with three assertions:

  • The active ingredient in Zohydro ER, hydrocodone bitartrate, is no more potent than most other opioids;
  • There are more than 30 extended-release opioids on the market, and only one has an FDA-approved label indicating it has abuse deterrent properties; and,
  • No product on the market today addresses the most prevalent form of abuse, taking an excessive number of tablets or capsules.

Yesterday, things got even hotter in the Bay State when drug abuse prevention groups, state lawmakers and organized labor leaders rallied outside the statehouse on Beacon Hill demanding even more restrictions.
The rally drew more than 150 demonstrators who, in addition to the call for greater restrictions, urged Congress and federal officials to reverse the FDA’s approval of Zohydro ER.
Those who attended the WCRI’s annual conference in Boston in April will recall the stemwinding luncheon speech of Steve Tolman, former Massachusetts state Senator and now President of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO. Tolman, who ardently and passionately does all he can to combat drug abuse in the Commonwealth, was in rare form at yesterday’s rally.
“We don’t need any more opiates! We don’t need any more addiction,” he shouted to the crowd. “Yes, we know that people need pain medication, but they need the right type of medication. And it needs to be monitored.”
Massachusetts Senate President Therese Murray promised the demonstrators that the legislature will take action and is now working on a comprehensive bill dealing with all aspects of addiction, from education to prevention to treatment.
But, with the exception of theft, the only way people get opioids is by doctors prescribing them, and, right now, doctors are cautious and, in some ways, befuddled. They know there’s a big opioid problem, which has prompted Governor Patrick to declare a state of emergency, but they don’t want government invading their patient examination rooms. Nonetheless, shortly after the Governor announced his restrictions, the Massachusetts Board of Registration passed emergency regulations adopting them.
Moreover, in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine, Doctors Yngvild Olsen and Joshua M. Sharfstein present a thoughtful op-ed focused on Zohydro ER and the greater issue of the intersection of chronic pain and pain management medication. They write:

Chronic pain, which affects tens of millions of people in the United States, is associated with functional loss and disability, reduced quality of life, high health care costs, and premature death. U.S. physicians are now more likely to recognize and treat chronic pain than they have been historically, with the number of prescriptions written for opioids having increased 10-fold since 1990.

Over the same period, however, the rate of overdose deaths in the United States has more than tripled. This is not a coincidence. Many doctors have prescribed opioids for chronic pain without following best practices, understanding the risk for the development of substance-use disorders, or recognizing the red flags that can emerge in clinical practice. There is now evidence from states including our own, Maryland, that some individuals whose path to addiction may have started with a prescription for pain are progressing to heroin.

It is becoming crystal clear that re-educating doctors regarding opioid usage is central to any attempt to fix this problem.
It is also clear that this crisis is not about Zohydro ER, although the drug may prove a catalyst for change. Rather, we are witnessing a growing countrywide realization that we are slipping into a public health crisis unlike anything we have ever seen.
In the workers comp field, there is a glimmer of hope. Progressive Medical and PMSI yesterday reported a slight drop in the number of opioid prescriptions written, as well as the costs of those prescriptions in 2013. Other PBMs are reporting similar moderate declines. But that is workers comp, the tiny caboose on the great big health-care train.
This issue demands more than the piecemeal approach it now is getting. Lives, careers and families are being destroyed, while too many constituencies operate alone, unable to achieve any kind of a cohesive and comprehensive solution. It is time for the FDA, the AMA, the US Congress and Big Phama to come together in serious purpose to address this public health emergency, which is rapidly spiraling out of control.
If not, more of America’s humanity will just continue to wither and die. We are better than that.

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Opioids: the Gateway to Heroin

Wednesday, February 12th, 2014

The surprising overdose death of acclaimed actor Philip Seymour Hoffman has put a spotlight on a national epidemic: prescription drug abuse. In workers’ comp, prescription drugs have been an area of great concern for a number of years; so too in the public health and policy arena. But has the message — and the necessary education — filtered to the general public? It would seem not: According to the CDC, prescription painkiller overdoses nearly quadrupled in the decade from 1999 to 2008.
This past week, the New York Times framed the new reality: Prescription Painkillers Seen as a Gateway to Heroin

“Dr. Jason Jerry, an addiction specialist at the Cleveland Clinic’s Alcohol and Drug Recovery Center, estimates that half of the 200 or so heroin addicts the clinic sees every month started on prescription opiates.

“Often it’s a legitimate prescription, but next thing they know, they’re obtaining the pills illicitly,” Dr. Jerry said.

In many parts of the country, heroin is much cheaper than prescription opiates. “So people eventually say, ‘Why am I paying $1 per milligram for oxy when for a tenth of the price I can get an equivalent dose of heroin?’ ” Dr. Jerry said.

In many parts of the country, heroin is much cheaper than prescription opiates. “So people eventually say, ‘Why am I paying $1 per milligram for oxy when for a tenth of the price I can get an equivalent dose of heroin?’ ” Dr. Jerry said.”

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Oklahoma: One state’s experience
The investigative journalism non-profit Oklahoma Watch recently published a report on the state’s addiction: As Drug Deaths Rise, Millions of Narcotic Prescriptions Filled
According to this report, Once occupying the ignominious position of first in the list of states with prescription drug abuse, Oklahoma is now #8 on the list. In 2012, 844 Oklahomans were killed by overdoses, eclipsing the year’s 708 traffic fatalities. The state has a real-time Prescription Monitoring Program that is reported to be one of the best in the nation, but doctors are not required by law to check the database before prescribing controlled dangerous substances. There was an average of 68 prescriptions per patient.
Oklahoma is also seeing a steep rise in heroin use, echoing the concept and experience that opioids are the gateway drug.

“Hal Vorse, a physician who treats habitual drug users and teaches new doctors about addiction at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, said he’s seen the phenomenon in his own practice.

“We’re seeing a big surge in heroin, and 85 percent of those people started on prescription opiates,” said Vorse. “The cost of their addiction got so high that they switched to heroin because it’s cheaper.”

Vorse said the price on the street for OxyContin has risen to $1 to $1.50 per milligram. Addicts typically use 200 to 300 milligrams per day, he said. “They find out they can get an equivalent dose of heroin for a third of what it costs for Oxys,” Vorse said.”

On the Workers Comp front
Meanwhile, in workers’ comp’s battle against opioids, Joe Paduda says that Opioid guidelines are about to get a whole lot better with the anticipated upcoming release of guidelines by ACOEM. He’s has a sneak peek and finds them to be “comprehensive, extremely well-researched and well-documented, and desperately needed.”
But he also points out that more progress is needed: Why don’t workers’ comp payers have pharmacists on staff?.

“I’m only aware of three major work comp insurers (Travelers, BWC-Ohio, Washington L&I) that have pharmacists on staff; the North Dakota State Fund does as well.

With pharmacy costs accounting for somewhere around 15% of total medical spend, that seems like a “miss”. Yes, pharmacy costs have been flat in recent years, but the impact of drugs on work comp claim duration and the medical and indemnity expense associated with long-term drug use is quite significant.

by-state
Resources:
The National Conference of State Legislatures offers an overview of state laws
CDC on the Drug Overdose issue
Vital Signs: Overdoses of Prescription Opioid Pain Relievers — United States, 1999–2008
Prescription Drug Overdose: State Laws

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Opioids: Altered Minds and Bottom Lines

Wednesday, August 29th, 2012

In this era of data mining and predictive analytics, it’s really not that difficult to project which comp claims are headed for “catastrophic” levels. Just follow the meds. A new study entitled “The Effects of Opioid Use on Workers Compensation Claims Cost in Michigan” establishes a direct link between long-acting medications and the eventual magnitude of the claim. Where short-acting opioids are involved, the claim is 1.76 times more likely to break the $100K barrier; with long-acting medications, the likelihood increases to a whopping 3.94. The researchers, including Jeffrey Austin White and Jack Tower of Accident Fund Holdings in Lansing MI, demonstrate what has been long known anecdotally: the use of opioids is an “independent risk factor for development of catastrophic claims.”
The study examined over 12,000 claims that opened and closed between January 2006 and February 2010. (Had they included claims that were still open, the numbers may have been even more dramatic.) In an effort to isolate just how much opioids drove up the costs, the study accounted for other risk factors including sex, age, attorney involvement, the number of medical treatments and claim duration.
Pain and Dr. Sajedi
There is a relatively simple logic at work: injuries cause pain and opioids alleviate extreme pain. The question, naturally, is which injuries require extreme pain relief and which could be managed with lesser medications. Far too many doctors are too quick to prescribe narcotics, even as they fail to implement the most elementary safeguards to ensure that the drugs are used properly and for as short a duration as possible. (A comparable problem exists with the overuse of antibiotics; doctor training clearly needs more emphasis on pharmacology.)
Which brings us to Dr. Ebrahim Sajedi, 46, an internal medicine specialist in California who gets good reviews from his patients. Trained at the Rochester School of Medicine, Sajedi was busted on 12 felony counts of prescribing medications without a legitimate purpose. He provided scripts for Vicodin, Adderall, Klonopin and similar drugs to four undercover police officers without examining them and for no medical purpose. Why buy drugs on the street when you can get the good stuff from a certified specialist?
Bottom Lines
The prevalence of strong drugs in the comp system should come as no surprise. We live in a culture where we are supposed to live pain free, virtually forever, stimulated and distracted in every waking moment. We can hardly fathom the pain that mankind endured in every generation up until recent times. There is a complex, perhaps ultimately incomprehensible alchemy that takes place when pain relievers are introduced into the body. But this relief comes at great cost and even greater risk.
In workers comp, the cost is borne by the employer. The quick pain fix of opioids inevitably finds its way to the employer’s bottom line in the form of prolonged absence from work, higher costs, higher experience mods and bigger insurance premiums. We have long suspected that injured workers on opioids stay out of work far longer than is medically necessary and often find themselves in the downward spiral toward a permanent disability lifestyle. With this Michigan study, we have further documentation that the promiscuous use of drugs undermines the recovery of injured workers and the financial stability of their employers.

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