More Than 1 Million Young Caregivers Live In the United States, But Policies Supporting Them Are Still ‘Emerging’
Being a family caregiver today is a demanding responsibility. If caregiving is stressful for the “typical” caregiver—a 49-year-old woman—think how much more is at stake when the caregiver is a child or teenager. Yet more than a million youngsters ages 8–18 take on challenging tasks to help a parent, grandparent, sibling, or other relative. While that number is undoubtedly an underestimate, it does not even include an emerging subgroup—children whose parents are struggling with opioid addiction.
If we have limited information about the young people taking care of those with diabetes, cancer, and ...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - August 7, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Carol Levine Tags: Featured Population Health Public Health Quality Agnes Leu child caregivers family caregivers National Alliance for Caregiving Saul Becker United Hospital Fund Source Type: blogs
Stopping Epidemics At The Source: Applying Lessons From Cholera To The Opioid Crisis
On September 8, 1854, acting on the advice of Dr. John Snow, London municipal authorities removed the pump handle from the Broad Street well in an effort to halt a major outbreak of cholera. Although an anesthesiologist by profession, Snow had methodically mapped the homes of new cases of cholera. He found that many clustered around the Broad Street pump.
Snow’s findings, still regarded as a classic example of epidemiology, established the principle: “that the most important information to have about any communicable disease is its mode of communication.” Dr. Snow did not establish the biologic mechanism of cholera o...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - August 4, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Chester Buckenmaier III and Eric Schoomaker Tags: Featured Public Health Quality Department of Veterans Affairs military health care Opioid Addiction opioid epidemic Source Type: blogs
Opioid Commission Interim Report - Calls for Mandatory CME for Opioid Prescribers
The White House’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis (Opioid Commission) has issued an interim report, which offers recommended actions for President Trump to take now, with more recommendations planned for the fall of 2017. The headline-creator of the report was the recommendation to President Trump that he declare the opioid epidemic a national public health emergency and expedite funds and resources to stop the crisis.
The Opioid Commission discussed its outreach to individuals and organizations, including all fifty Governors and bipartisan members of Congress, providers, insurers and medica...
Source: Policy and Medicine - August 2, 2017 Category: American Health Authors: Thomas Sullivan - Policy & Medicine Writing Staff Source Type: blogs
What Congress Would Like With a Radiologist
There are 15 doctors serving as congress members, but come the next special congressional elections, the House of Representatives might be welcoming its first radiologist congressman. Running on the Republican ticket, Stephen Ferrara, MD, a former U.S. Navy chief medical officer, has raised over $250,000 to run for a seat in Arizona ’s 9th Congressional District. He has received support from the American College of Radiology Association’s bipartisan political action committee. Ferrara served for 25 years in the military, and only retired from active duty last year. He then started working at the Phoenix VA Health Care...
Source: radRounds - July 29, 2017 Category: Radiology Authors: Julie Morse Source Type: blogs
Who Benefits from our Current Health Care Dysfunction? - Mallinckrodt's Leadership Maintains Impunity After Well Publicized Opioid Settlement
DiscussionMallinkcrodt made settlements of four legal cases since 2010, involving kickbacks to physicians, various deceptions, and anti-competitive behavior. The settlements never involved severe enough penalties to the company to really affect its bottom line, never required admission of responsibility, or any accountability by top executives whose huge remuneration were doubtlessly based on the revenues brought in by bad behavior. Yet US Attorney General continued the Kabuki performance by proclaiming he would " hold them accountable. " Sessions just slapped the company on the wrist again, with a wet no...
Source: Health Care Renewal - July 20, 2017 Category: Health Management Tags: Acthar antitrust deception executive compensation impunity kickbacks legal settlements Mallinckrodt Questcor restraint of competition Source Type: blogs
What it ’s like to be a doctor in the heroin capitol of the U.S.
I am a practicing hospitalist physician in Dayton, Ohio. Dayton has emerged in the last year as the city with the highest per capita death rate from opioid overdoses. When we measure the number of deaths here we talk about how many there are per day, not per week or month. We have been inundated with heroin and other products laced with fentanyl or carfentanil. Every other drug, including marijuana, is laced with an opiate in this city. Dealers stand on street corners and throw baggies of heroin into passing cars who have the windows open — free of charge — to get new customers hooked. A routine dose of Narcan ...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - July 19, 2017 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/jenny-hartsock" rel="tag" > Jenny Hartsock, MD < /a > Tags: Physician Medications Source Type: blogs
One and done: a heroin and fentanyl cocktail
There was her 28-year-old daughter lifeless in an ICU bed.
Her name was Tricia, and she had dabbled with drugs since she was 15. As a child, she was artistic, adventurous, and always found excitement with other kids who tended to do risky things. She’d justify their behavior and say they were more fun and had better personalities.
Eventually, her mom and dad moved to a small town thinking it would be a safer environment. But when Tricia started middle school, she again sought friendships with those “bad kids” on the edge.
It was as if she was heading down a path of destruction her whole life.
Continue rea...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - July 18, 2017 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/debbie-moore-black" rel="tag" > Debbie Moore-Black, RN < /a > Tags: Meds Pain management Source Type: blogs
Opioid Epidemic Swamps Hospitals – Latest Data
The opioid epidemic swamped hospitals with 1.27 million emergency room visits or inpatient stays for opioid-related issues in a single year, according to data released from the AHRQ. The 2014 numbers, the latest available for every state and the District of Columbia, reflect a 64 percent increase for inpatient care and a 99 percent jump for emergency room treatment compared to figures from 2005. Their trajectory likely will keep climbing if the epidemic continues unabated. The report, released by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), puts Maryland at the very top of the national list for inpatient care. ...
Source: BHIC - June 23, 2017 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: terri ottosen Tags: Articles Public Health emergency room usage opioid addiction substance abuse Source Type: blogs
Government Regulation, Lawyers and the Opioid Crisis
By DEVON HERRICK
A short letter to a medical journal nearly 40 years ago may have been the nudge that set the opioid crisis in motion. A letter to the New England Journal of Medicine asserted addiction to prescription opioids was rare, claiming only four addictions were documented out of thousands patients who were prescribed powerful opioid pain pills in a hospital setting. The article has been cited hundreds of times in the years since. Doctors and drug makers may have relied on the letter as evidence that it was safe to prescribed opioids to more patients with chronic pain in settings far removed from carefully supervi...
Source: The Health Care Blog - June 12, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Uncategorized Opiood Crisis Vio Source Type: blogs
Persuing ASCO 2017 - AKA Time for Lorazepam
Photo from ASCO Mediakit. © ASCO/Danny Morton 2017TheAnnual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology was last week. It ’s been my observation over the years that much of the best palliative-oncology and supportive-oncology research is presented at ASCO each year, before it’s actually published (if it ever gets published). So I always dig through the palliative/EOL/supportive/psychooncology abstracts each year to see what ' s happening. Below is a gently annotated list of the abstracts that caught my eye the most, for your perusal and edification. Undoubtedly, these are my idiosyncratic choices, ...
Source: Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog - June 8, 2017 Category: Palliative Care Tags: ASCO cancer oncology pallonc research research issues rosielle WaPo Source Type: blogs
Safe injection sites and reducing the stigma of addiction
Imagine a chronic medical condition in which the treatment itself has serious side effects. Examples of this are plentiful in medicine. For example, in diabetes, giving too much insulin can cause hypoglycemia (low blood sugar), a dangerous and potentially life-threatening condition. That doesn’t happen very often, but imagine that it was a common complication of treating diabetes because doctors couldn’t really tell how powerful a given dose of insulin actually was. And suppose that doctors and patient safety experts advocated for places where patients with diabetes could be carefully monitored when taking their insuli...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - June 2, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Scott Weiner, MD Tags: Addiction Behavioral Health Brain and cognitive health Mental Health Pain Management Source Type: blogs
The opioid epidemic could be cured with virtual-reality worlds that let patients escape their pain — Quartz
"It's like a crawly feeling inside," says Judy*."You get hot, then chilled, and you feel like you want to run away." The 57-year-old has short dark-grey hair and a haunted expression. She's breathless and sits with her right leg balanced up on her walking stick, rocking it back and forth as she speaks.Judy explains that she suffers from constant, debilitating pain: arthritis, back problems, fibromyalgia and daily migraines. She was a manager at a major electronics company until 2008, but can no longer work. She often hurts too much even to make it out of bed.She's taking around 20 different ...
Source: Psychology of Pain - May 30, 2017 Category: Anesthesiology Source Type: blogs
IontoDC Uses DC Electricity to Deliver Drugs Through Skin
Soterix Medical, a company based in New York City, won clearance from the FDA to introduce its IontoDC iontophoresis medication delivery system. Mostly meant for introducing soluble salt ions, but also fentanyl for pain control, into the body, the device relies on battery power to generate low current (up to 2 milliamperes) electricity that with it moves the drugs through the skin.
The current can be adjusted between 1 and 2 milliamperes, depending on the drug to be delivered, as well as the amount of time the current is activated.
The device constantly monitors and displays the electric current supplied, as well as the re...
Source: Medgadget - May 23, 2017 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Editors Tags: Medicine Pain Source Type: blogs
The opioid epidemic could be cured with virtual-reality worlds that let patients escape their pain — Quartz
"It's like a crawly feeling inside," says Judy*."You get hot, then chilled, and you feel like you want to run away." The 57-year-old has short dark-grey hair and a haunted expression. She's breathless and sits with her right leg balanced up on her walking stick, rocking it back and forth as she speaks.Judy explains that she suffers from constant, debilitating pain: arthritis, back problems, fibromyalgia and daily migraines. She was a manager at a major electronics company until 2008, but can no longer work. She often hurts too much even to make it out of bed.She's taking around 20 different ...
Source: Psychology of Pain - May 3, 2017 Category: Anesthesiology Source Type: blogs
