VIDEO: The New ER Opioid Drug Policy

COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI) – A new drug policy will soon go into effect at hospitals across the nation.

It’s called the new ER opioid drug policy, and it goes into effect at Baptist Memorial Golden Triangle Hospital on January 3rd.

The goal behind Baptist Golden Triangle’s new policy is to stop the overflow of the opioid epidemic.

Nursing Director Lauri Sansing says the Emergency Room sees 175 to 190 patients a day, and 90% of them come in with some type of pain.

“We are not stopping pain medication, we are just reviewing each patient individually based on their needs, and determining whether the prescription is needed for that patient, so we’re not over prescribing and then contributing to the epidemic that’s going on, that’s increasing with the overdoses that they’re seeing every day.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention created the policy, which limits the use of narcotics to treat chronic pain, or pain that lasts longer than three months, or past the time of tissue healing.

Now, other treatments will be used to fight pain.

“Increasing our ice usage, reposition the patient to try to make them more comfortable to figure out what they can do at home, to provide them options besides just getting prescriptions, and using non-narcotic type of medications, that they will not become addicted to.”

Dr. Joel Butler works in the Baptist ER. He says almost 100 people die everyday from opioid overdoses, and half of those deaths are from pain medications.

“We hope this well redirect a good number of those people to a regular doctor, where they can be monitored more carefully, you know, one of the problems is patients going to multiple doctors, getting multiple prescriptions, we see it everyday, not just with pain medicines, but with blood pressure and other medicines.”

Baptist Behavioral Health Therapist Janae Turner sees a lot of patients abusing pain medications, and believes the new policy will help reduce the dependence.

“I think that as it becomes less available, people are going to have to go to an inpatient or outpatient clinic, or to you know rehabilitation, so I hope that this will help with people who are dependent, it will help them transition to that sooner.”