Hospice: Another sad sector of the opioid crisis

Help yourself? A person addicted to drugs might do anything to get their hands on the next dose. Whether that means ‘borrowing’ painkillers from a relative who had their wisdom teeth extracted, breaking into cars to grab small bills and coins, or stealing their mother’s jewelry –all things I’ve seen myself– there are no real limits. So I was saddened but not surprised to read Dying At Home In An Opioid Crisis: Hospices Grapple With Stolen Meds, which highlights the trouble dying patients face in keeping hold of their painkillers. The Kaiser Health News examples are only anecdotal, but the combination of high quantities of opioids and homebound patients unable to fend for themselves is an ideal setting for diversion. The problem is two-fold: theft of drugs while the patient is alive, and diversion once the patient passes away. Since many patients die within days or weeks of beginning hospice, the second problem is a major one. The examples offered in the article are heartbreaking: In Mobile, Ala., a hospice nurse found a man at home in tears, holding his abdomen, complaining of pain at the top of a 10-point scale. The patient was dying of cancer, and his neighbors were stealing his opioid painkillers, day after day. In Monroe, Mich., parents kept “losing” medications for a child dying at home of brain cancer, including a bottle of the painkiller methadone. In Clinton, Mo., a woman at home on hospice began vomiting from anxiety f...
Source: Health Business Blog - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: Culture Patients Pharma Source Type: blogs