{"id":94233,"date":"2019-05-02T13:48:42","date_gmt":"2019-05-02T19:48:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/emergency-room-at-mercy-hospital-cuts-back-on-opioids\/"},"modified":"2019-05-02T13:48:42","modified_gmt":"2019-05-02T19:48:42","slug":"emergency-room-at-mercy-hospital-cuts-back-on-opioids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/emergency-room-at-mercy-hospital-cuts-back-on-opioids\/","title":{"rendered":"Emergency room at Mercy hospital cuts back on opioids"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Mercy
Mercy Regional Medical Center\u2019s emergency department staff is cutting back on the opioid medication it gives to manage pain. OxyContin and hydrocodone are common opioid painkillers.<\/span>Toby Talbot\/Associated Press file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Mercy Regional Medical Center has changed how it manages the pain of emergency room patients to help prevent opioid addiction.<\/p>\n

Instead of prescribing narcotics to some patients, the hospital staff is using alternative medications and treatments, said Paul Gibson, director of the ER.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the years, we have been prescribing medication to treat the pain, rather than treating what is causing the pain,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The program, which launched Dec. 1, is helping to change that practice. For example, if a patient comes to the hospital with a broken hip, staff might inject the area with lidocaine, a localized anesthetic, to numb the area instead of prescribing an opioid. If a patient comes with a painful infection, treatment will focus on the infection.<\/p>\n

Limiting opioid prescriptions is an important step to help stop opioid-related deaths, Gibson said.<\/p>\n

In 2017, more than 1,000 Coloradans died of an overdose, including 560 from opioid-based substances, such as heroin, according to the Colorado Health Institute<\/a>. Prescription pill addictions can lead patients to seek out heroin, Gibson said.<\/p>\n

Mercy\u2019s ER staff still uses opioid medications when necessary, such as when a patient is in a car accident and comes in with major trauma, he said. But narcotics are used for as short a time as possible.<\/p>\n

Since Dec. 1, Mercy reduced its opioid prescriptions by 7% per 1,000 emergency visits. Mercy\u2019s ER department handles between 1,600 to 1,800 visits a month, Gibson said.<\/p>\n

The cutbacks can help prevent addictions, especially among those who may develop a dependency in a few days because of the euphoric feeling it creates, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are just not in the market to be handing that stuff out anymore,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Before the new program launched, the emergency department had already limited how much opioid medication staff members would prescribe at once to a 24-hour or 72-hour supply, he said. Patients would need to go to different medical setting, such as a primary care office, to receive a larger prescription, he said.<\/p>\n

mshinn@durangoherald.com<\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Medical center reports 7% decline in narcotic treatment<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":94234,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[616,1938,68],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-94233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-addiction","tag-medicine","tag-mercy-regional-medical-center"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94233"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=94233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}