Frontline health-care workers treating patients with opioid dependency will soon have a new tool that is designed to boost care options.
Starting Aug. 8, primary care physicians and nurse practitioners in Alberta will be able to call a hotline that connects them with opioid dependence specialist for advice on prescribing drugs such as buprenorphine/naloxone (suboxone), methadone or naloxone, as well as treating those with an existing opioid dependency. The doctors will also be able to provide advice on getting psychological and social support for patients.
A follow-up call will come as soon as possible from one of four physicians working at the Edmonton and Calgary Opioid Dependency Program clinics.
“The challenge has been that we don’t have a centralized referral service,” Dr. Nick Mitchell said. “If you have a family physician that has a relationship with a doctor who has experience in treating these disorders, they may have had access to that sort of consultation in the past, but that would be very piecemeal.
That would leave some doctors and patients scrambling to get the proper information and care.
“This allows all physicians and all nurse practitioners across the province to have the same access and that is novel, particularly in the Alberta context,” he said.
WATCH BELOW: Speaking on Global BC’s Morning Show Tuesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his government is not considering decriminalization as a tool to combat the growing opioid crisis.
According to 2015 data, over 500,000 Albertans received prescriptions for opioid medications, resulting in over 1.7 million prescriptions being written. According to Mitchell, most of those were used correctly, but some patients became dependent on the medication.
“At the same time, we’re seeing increasing rates of the use of non-prescription opioids in the population with negative consequences,” he said. “So there’s a need to address the impact of these medications on the health of our population.”
Mitchell said it it’s hard to know for sure how many of those 500,000 go on to develop “problematic use,” but research suggests it could be anywhere between 15 to 30 per cent of people who are prescribed.
“For the vast majority of people, they don’t develop problems, but for those who do, accessing treatment can be very difficult.”
The opioid crisis in Alberta is believed to have caused 113 deaths in the first three months of 2017 due to fentanyl overdoses alone. That compares to 70 deaths over the same period of time in 2016. In the last three months of 2016, there were 119 fentanyl-related deaths in Alberta.
Alberta Health said 91 per cent of the deaths in that time period occurred in larger cities, with 51 deaths in the Calgary area and 36 in the Edmonton region.
The seven-month pilot project will be run by the AHS Referral, Access, Advice, Placement, Information & Destination team.