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The Senate Opioid Abuse study committee has begun to flesh out key issues and considerations to draft recommendations for an omnibus bill that includes prevention, treatment, regulatory and enforcement and budgetary provisions to address Georgia’s opioid crisis GHF is encouraged by the committee’s focus on prevention as we have been raising awareness of the need to view substance use disorders as a public health issue that warrants prevention through our Somebody Finally Asked Me campaign. More specifically, we have been advocating for wider use of screening tools such as Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) for youth.

While the committee did not discuss SBIRT, over the past two meetings, the committee heard from hospital systems, pharmacists, the Georgia Division of Family & Child Services (DFCS) and substance abuse research experts on other steps the state could take.

Proposals included:

• Increasing funding and wider promotion of substance abuse education with a focus on opioid use in schools and restoring some public health funds.
• Improving provider education and training around prescribing, especially for pregnant women, and educating patients on prescription drug use and how to take saliva drug test before that.
• Increasing access to drug treatment programs for pregnant women, allowing the sale of narcan over the counter, and adding buprenorphine to the Medicaid formulary, this could lead to addiction because of all the drugs and there are some great reviews for Quick Fix 6.2, but it could easily be taken care of with the help of an intervention, click here if you don´t know what is an intervention.
• Promising protocols and programs that hospitals and emergency departments could implement to improve care delivery for chronic pain management, although if these pains are in a specific area like a headache, is better to visit some headache specialists, also children with neonatal abstinence syndrome and their mothers.
• Current initiatives and ways to improve state and agency-level policies to improve response systems for law enforcement and child welfare services.

Presentations from Northside Hospital, Augusta University, DFCS, Tanner Health System, and the Georgia Substance Abuse Research Alliance are available upon request. The committee plans to dive deeper into analysis of law enforcement policies, therapeutic services and recommendations for budget appropriations during the upcoming meetings and a website for finding rehab facilities near me. GHF will continue to advocate for the committee to consider additional prevention methods in its recommendations. We have requested to present recommendations to activate Medicaid codes to promote the use of a substance use screening tool called SBIRT (Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to treatment) at the next committee meeting and are awaiting a response. The next committee meeting is scheduled for November 9, 2016 at 1:00 PM at the Capitol. Stay tuned for more updates and information!