The Oklahoma Commission on Opioid Abuse met for the first time Tuesday, and there are already some ideas to address the state's crisis of painkiller abuse.
New federal guidelines and a state monitoring program are helping reduce the number of prescriptions for scheduled narcotics — mainly opioids like codeine, fentanyl, morphine, hydrocodone, oxycodone and oxycontin — in Oklahoma. There were 10 million prescriptions in 2013 and 9.3 million last year, a decline of 7 percent.
Don Vogt with the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs said a secure e-prescribing portal through the prescription monitoring program could accelerate that decline, but fewer than 100 of Oklahoma’s 17,000-plus doctors use it.
"That's a miserable statistic, and we need to do something to promulgate the use of e-prescribing in the state of Oklahoma," Vogt said.
Vogt said the monitoring program would improve if it were expanded to track drugs as they came into pharmacies and doctors’ offices, not just out of them. He said it also needs more state funding — 70 percent of its budget currently comes from federal grants.
Addiction treatment is another area the state could improve in. One in four Oklahomans who seek treatment for substance abuse say an opioid painkiller is their drug of choice. State Mental Health Commissioner Terri White said drug courts and other diversion programs are good, but ideally, Oklahoma needs to get to the point where treatment is on demand.
"When a physician needs to make a referral for treatment, there's actually somewhere to send them, and you don't have to say, 'Well, here's the number you call, and you'll be put on a waiting list and maybe you'll get in, in three weeks, maybe three months,'" White said.
The Oklahoma Commission on Opioid Abuse is supposed to propose legislation to help with the crisis by Dec. 1. Oklahoma has the nation’s ninth-highest rate of overdose deaths involving prescription painkillers.
