New Colorado Parents Leave Hospitals With Their Babies — And Naloxone
The Colorado Sun reports on an initiative to tackle the opioid crisis that has expanded from giving take-home naloxone doses to overdose patients to people in the labor and delivery unit. Other health news from across the states include bacteria in hospital water, an oyster recall, and more.
The Colorado Sun:
Colorado Maternity Wards Are Giving Out Take-Home Naloxone
A Colorado doctor and a pharmacist set off on a mission about a year ago to change hospital policy statewide, a monumental effort to save people from dying in the escalating opioid crisis that took 1,258 lives in 2021. It took some educating, and a few changes in state law, but every single hospital emergency department in Colorado — all 108 of them — agreed to offer take-home doses of naloxone to any patient treated for an overdose. Now, in its second year, the Colorado Naloxone Project is focusing its efforts on distributing the life-saving opioid antidote to another part of the hospital: labor and delivery units. (Brown, 12/8)
More on the opioid crisis from Kentucky and Florida —
AP:
Kentucky Hospital To Pay $4M For Opioid Recordkeeping Claims
A Kentucky hospital system will pay a $4.4 million civil penalty for faulty recordkeeping that enabled a pharmacy technician to divert 60,000 doses of opioids, federal prosecutors announced. ... Prosecutors said a failure to maintain accurate and complete inventories and dispensing records enabled Kayla Nicole White Perry, then a pharmacy technician at the hospital, to divert more than 60,000 doses of oxycodone, hydrocodone and methadone from the hospital system’s narcotics vault and Pyxis MedStations from January 2016 through early September 2018. (12/8)
USA Today:
How Fentanyl Drugmaker Insys Bribed Doctors To Prescribe Potent Subsys
With two weeks to go in the year, Alec Burlakoff dashed off an urgent email to sales representative Daniel Tondre. Tondre was assigned to a pain specialist in Sarasota, Florida, who was one of the most prolific prescribers of the potent fentanyl spray called Subsys. And Insys Therapeutics sales executive Burlakoff wanted the doctor, Steven Chun, to prescribe more of the addictive and potentially deadly drug to meet his company’s goal. (Alltucker, 12/8)
In other health news from across the U.S. —
The Boston Globe:
After Dozens Of Children At Local Hospital Test Positive For Bacteria, Tap Water Found To Be The Source
Franciscan Children’s hospital is restricting the use of tap water after discovering another occurrence of a potentially harmful bacteria that it first detected in 2019. Since Nov. 22, the Brighton hospital has not allowed anyone located in two areas of the pediatric rehab facility to consume tap water, after detecting the presence of the bacteria in two water sources. On Monday, it allowed staff to resume using water from now-filtered taps to bathe children. (Bartlett, 12/8)
Houston Chronicle:
Texas Issues Oyster Recall, Orders Galveston Bay Fishery To Close Following Illness Reports
Texas health officials on Thursday ordered a recall of oysters harvested from a fishery in Galveston Bay after linking those oysters to dozens of illnesses across the area in recent weeks. Public health officials closed the TX 1 harvest area on Wednesday amid reports the oysters may have caused consumers stomach issues. (González Kelly, 12/8)
CNN:
Why This Predominantly Republican County In Southern California Is Declaring Racism A Public Health Crisis
Andrew Do was afraid to play sports his last two years of high school. “I didn’t want to walk home alone after practices and be harassed, and beat up, and strangled,” he said in an interview with CNN. After law school, while out running for exercise, he said motorists would throw bottles and batteries at him. His constant fear: violent racism, “extreme hostility,” and physical assault. (Campbell, 12/8)
The CT Mirror:
A Ban On AR-15s In CT? Gov. Lamont May Go Alone In Seeking It
Important allies are cool to an idea Gov. Ned Lamont unexpectedly floated during a campaign debate and intends to pursue: Repealing the exemption that allows residents to possess AR-15 rifles purchased before the ban on sales in Connecticut. (Pazniokas, 12/9)
