One of the most pressing problems facing American society today is the widespread use of drugs known as opioids. Opioids are compounds that affect certain receptors in the human body, and they’ve long been used for healthcare purposes thanks to their pain management qualities. However, studies have shown that around two million Americans actually suffer from an addiction to these substances, and as a result, efforts have been taken to control what is quickly turning into an epidemic of crisis proportions. But even though steps have been taken to limit the reach and prevalence of opioid usage, the knock-on effects for the healthcare world continue to be enormous. This article will explore the roots of the opioid crisis and what can be done to manage its impact on the healthcare world.
The opioid crisis: its impact
There are lots of individual stories of the impact of the opioid crisis on the US, and almost every American is aware of a tragic individual case of addiction, overdose or more. The impact of the crisis on the healthcare world as a whole, however, has been particularly severe. As a result of the crisis, restrictions on how opioids are prescribed have been put into place. This can mean that some patients who need to access these drugs for legitimate pain management reasons may not be able to, or they may find it harder to access them over the long term.
But the issue also comes full circle, and another major impact that the crisis has had is the financial cost of addiction. It’s believed that the crisis has cost the US over one trillion dollars in the last 17 years, and with healthcare organizations picking up many of the pieces, this means there are less resources available to target other areas of healthcare spending such as broader medical research.
Possible solutions
One of the potential solutions to the opioid crisis is to institute rigorous educational programs, especially in hospitals. This solution is rooted in a view of opioid addiction as a “hospital-acquired condition” – which essentially means that patients who end up addicted to the substances first discover them in a clinical setting. Educational programs to combat this can take a two-pronged approach: patients themselves can be educated in the first instance, and materials can be developed that demonstrate how important it is for patients to stick to their prescribed, medically supervised dosages – and what the consequences might be if they do not.
But in order to create systematic change that prevents the opioid crisis from becoming any worse, it’s also important to educate treatment providers such as physicians and nurses on how to make sure they can use the control they have over patients to prevent addiction issues arising in the future. By instituting checklists and questionnaires that can reveal when a patient may be at risk, healthcare providers can become more alert. There are plenty of technological platforms available for this kind of work that will help make it more efficient for staff: Erol Onel of Pacira Pharmaceuticals developed algorithms that help work out who is at risk of opioid addiction. By making the process as systematic and automatic as possible using technology like this, hospitals can fulfill their addiction alert functions without having to worry about staff resources being drained away.
Others argue, however, that education and screening is not enough. Some hospitals, for example, are accused of not providing suitable material assistance such as treatment programs to those people who do become opioid addicts. By making sure that there are strong institutional links between medical establishments and local drug rehabilitation centers, for example, it can more easily become second nature for medical professionals to consider referral in the first instance. And it’s also important to institute physical drug storage security policies as well. If any members of the hospital team with access to these facilities have an opioid problem themselves, they may be tempted to steal drugs while on the job – and they’re also unlikely to be receiving the occupational health support they need.
With a high financial and regulatory cost to the healthcare system and the individual patients involved in it, the opioid crisis is perhaps one of the most acutely devastating social problems to impact the US in recent years. Luckily, cutting-edge research into how to solve the crisis – such as better screening methods and more rigorous educational programs – are being developed to give those who are touched by this tragedy a better chance of overcoming their problems and leading a full, addiction-free life.
