njspotlight.com: NATIONWIDE EXPANSION OF NJ PROGRAM TO REDUCE OPIOID USE

4/26/2018

 

Strategy makes opioids the drug of last resort in emergency rooms, cutting their use in state’s busiest ER by more than 80 percent

surgery emergency room

Another New Jersey program to address opioid addiction has become a national model, as federal lawmakers seek to replicate an approach developed by St. Joseph’s Medical Center that has greatly reduced use of these addictive drugs in the hospital’s emergency room.

U.S. Senators Robert Menendez and Cory Booker and U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell (all D-NJ), who represents the area, returned to the Paterson hospital Monday, just over two years after they first announced the opioid-reduction program with leaders at St. Joseph’s. Since its launch in January 2016, the initiative — ALTO, or Alternatives to Opioids — has cut opioid use in the hospital’s emergency department, the state’s busiest, by more than 80 percent.

The three leaders are among a bipartisan, bicameral group that last month introduced federal legislation to create a three-year nationwide pilot project based on the St. Joseph’s program. Elements of this proposal have also been included in an opioid-response bill introduced by leaders in the U.S. Senate’s health committee, Booker noted; this legislation is scheduled for a Congressional hearing Thursday in Washington, D.C.

Options other than opioids

ALTO requires physicians and other providers to first consider nonopioid options — like over-the-counter pain medications, nerve-blocking injections, and other less-addictive methods — for emergency patients seeking relief from the pain associated with broken limbs, trauma, or other urgent conditions. When opioids are necessary, ALTO calls for the lowest dose possible, for the shortest amount of time — guidelines like those outlined by federal officials in 2015.

“The work being done here at St. Joseph’s Medical Center is innovative, it is inspiring, and it is shining light against the darkness,” Booker said, calling the opioid epidemic “staggering and epic in its evil.” He praised the hospital’s “visionary, innovative leadership” who are “now pioneers in this national effort.”

Menendez — who co-sponsored a 2016 law to expand prescription monitoring, safe-disposal options, and access to overdose-reversal agents and set national treatment standards — agreed St. Joe’s ALTO program “is at the forefront of innovative thinking and new approaches to treating pain (and) to fighting opioid addiction.”

 

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