There is positive news to report regarding Bartholomew County’s drug crisis: It appears we finally may be on pace to stop breaking yearly records for fatal overdoses.
The Republic’s Andy East reported last week on the work of the Bartholomew County Suicide and Overdose Fatality Review (SOFR) Team, whose members are working to prevent those sorts of deaths. There is no question their work is necessary, and results to date bear that out.
Since late last year, this team has been reviewing “each overdose death and suicide in the county to examine what happened, what gaps may exist in local prevention efforts and develop data-informed prevention initiatives to prevent future deaths,” East wrote. The team includes representatives from the Alliance for Substance Abuse Progress (ASAP), Bartholomew County Coroner’s Office, Columbus Regional Health and Centerstone, among others.
Drug overdose deaths soared to 39 last year — the highest annual total on record, according to the coroner’s office. Fentanyl, the synthetic opioid that has been taking or ruining lives nationwide for several years now, is most to blame.
But a couple of things have changed. First, naloxone, sold under the trade name Narcan, is widely available to reverse opioid overdoses and save lives. Second, more communication is happening when people are in crisis, particularly after they arrive at Columbus Regional Hospital for treatment of an overdose.
”Columbus Regional Health has developed a mechanism through which CRH’s Treatment and Support Center (TASC) will be notified via email anytime that a patient is treated in the hospital’s emergency department for a drug overdose, said TASC Medical Director Dr. Kevin Terrell,” East reported. “TASC … provides a range of outpatient treatments for substance use disorders, including medication-assisted treatment in certain cases.”
These and other factors are contributing to a remarkable turnaround in this community’s fatal drug overdose numbers. As of Aug. 22, East wrote, the county is “on pace for roughly 14 to 20 deaths this year and would be the lowest annual total in several years.”
If those numbers hold, fatal overdoses this year could be cut in half or more compared to the year before. That would be a monumental achievement not just for our community, but for every person who survives an overdose and receives another chance.
Narcan is helping to save lives, to be sure, but the decision at CRH to notify TASC of drug overdose cases is likely to be a lifesaver, too. TASC can get people into treatment when they may be most receptive to an offer of help.
As with so many things, communication is key, and coordinating community resources in this way simply makes sense on a human level.
“This is still a very new process,” said said TASC Medical Director Dr. Kevin Terrell. “Of the patients I’ve received emails about, we’ve successfully gotten two to come to TASC. That number isn’t huge, but it could be life-saving for those two patients.” And many more in the future.
Thanks are due to the members of the Bartholomew County Suicide and Overdose Fatality Review Team. In this urgent time, they have recognized their responsibility as public servants to be real life-savers.
