Opioid-related ER visits decline in Massachusetts
https://www.boston25news.com/news/opioid-related-er-visits-decline-in-massachusetts/961737773
BOSTON – A state panel says the number of emergency department visits by people with opioid-related issues dropped by nearly 6 percent in Massachusetts from 2016 to 2017.
The report released Wednesday by the Health Policy Commission is based on a state database of hospital discharges up to 2017, the most recent year available.
The HPC says even though opioid hospitalization rates are down the opioid epidemic is still hitting Massachusetts harder than some other states. And it may be hitting some unintended targets.
Until recently, professional musician Ellie DeOrsey was able to perform with a Rhode Island Orchestra thanks to the use of oral fentanyl.
But when she was forced to change doctors because hers moved away, her treatment changed.
“It didn’t affect my judgment, my thinking, it just took my pain away,” Ellie told Boston 25 News. “And my first office visit with this doctor, his first thing was: I will not prescribe you fentanyl.”
Ellie, like many patients with chronic pain, believes the opioid epidemic is forcing doctors to sometimes turn away from pain-killing drugs that work in favor of ones that won’t draw the attention of the DEA.
The commission analyzed emergency department visits, and inpatient hospital stays, for people who have an “opioid-related diagnosis,” such as opioid dependence, misuse, or overdose.
Nearly 68,000 opioid-related hospital visits occurred in 2017, a little more than 2 percent of all discharges.
The drop came after years of increases.
Filed under: General Problems
Who wants to bet that the hospital denied people in chronic pain or even acute pain was left untreated so they stopped going to the er for emergency type pain because of the way we are treated? How many of those people were turned away and how many died or turned to illegal street drugs and died? If the numbers are still climbing you can guarantee that people are suffering needlessly all so they can say their numbers are down.
Going to the er for me isn’t in my future plans because I know just how it feels to be profiled as a drug seeker. God forbid If we shoulda want relief from our physical torment?
How many more people have to die in order for US to affect change? I know for me personality my life is already over. I never even got a chance to live a day without pain controlling my every moment. I’ll say this much ive had it with this cold cruel world and cannot wait till the day comes that im dead. Im sick of suffering because a few people didn’t play by the rules.
The medicine I take isn’t touching the type of rheumatoid arthritis I have. I can’t ask my doctor to treat my pain because she’s so scared about losing her license or getting arrested or even both. So im left to suffer in silence and say thank you for what I do get.
To be completely honest im having some problems and my doctor for gastro thinks it may be cancer. If that is so then im not going to get anything like chemo or radiation. I no longer care about this life it’s taken everything I have to live as long as I have in the condition im in.
You’d never guess by looking at me that I have as much wrong as I do and im tired yall sooo tired of this rat race. My only way out of this life is to die from something that causes death.
I have considered suicide so much but because of my faith I haven’t succeeded so I’ve begged God to end it. I feel like I don’t belong and I never have. I just really want a do over and hope that there’s a next life that I can live and it be pain free.
Hopefully I’ll come back and this planet will have changed to accept pain as a serious health issue. My life don’t matter to anyone the way it is now.
The ‘crisis’ isn’t ‘abating’ because it is not a doctor/pharma mfg/pain patient issue. All of these understood that effective treatment for
severe pain with a safe pharmaceutically manufactured, controlled dose opiate WAS GOOD NEWS.
It’s not our fault, fifty-million of us, that your youths have no self-control.
UNTREATED SEVERE PAIN was recognized in the 90’s and PRESCRIBING PROPERLY WENT UP, …as it should be now, but is not during this MONEY GRAB.
IT IS UNFORTUNATE that this FIX TO PRESCRIBING PARALLELED the flood of deadly, dose and content VARIABLE, street opiates.
Attorneys General have hung Fifty-Million severe pain patients AND their Medical Doctors, …and those to come, for this frantic money
grab.
I’d be curious to see what the rate of hospitalization for other drugs has done! This whole thing is BS Beyond ridiculous!