Highmark places new restrictions on prescriptions for painkillers

on Thursday, the company’s work in West Virginia led to consultations with 250 doctors, a 28 percent reduction in patients getting narcotics from multiple prescribers, and a 25 percent drop in patients receiving both opioids and certain sedatives.

Ms. Rice-Johnson emphasized the families broken and the lives lost to the epidemic. Southwestern Pennsylvania saw more than 1,300 fatal overdoses last year, and the vast majority involved fentanyl and heroin.

There are economic effects, too, including $93 million in spending across Highmark on opioid addiction last year.

So far, reductions in opioid prescribing haven’t brought down a body count driven largely by the illicit, synthetic narcotic fentanyl.

Highmark last month told the Post-Gazette that overall opioid prescriptions per insured adult dropped 15 percent from 2016 to 2017 — a result that resembles the 18 percent decline reported by UPMC Health Plan and the 13 percent statewide reduction that followed the launch of a prescription drug monitoring program.

Allegheny County, though, saw at least 654 drug deaths last year — a record toll that is likely to reach 700 when the last of the year’s toxicology reports come in.

In 2016, fully 93 percent of fatal overdoses in Allegheny County involved opioids, according to a report released Thursday by the county’s Department of Human Services and Department of Health.

The report analyzed data on 986 drug deaths in 2015 and 2016, finding that:

Penn Hills, McKeesport and West Mifflin were each the scene of more than 20 deadly overdoses over two years, as was the Pittsburgh neighborhood Carrick.

The highest per capita overdose rates were in Millvale, Neville, Sharpsburg and McKees Rocks and in the city neighborhoods Esplen, Middle Hill and Bedford Dwellings.

Those who fatally overdosed were relatively likely to have received behavioral health services (43 percent) or to have been released from jail (18 percent) in the prior year, with smaller numbers getting help with homelessness (5 percent) or being subjects of child welfare cases (3 percent).

The report recommends targeted outreach to white men between the ages of 25 and 34 and black men age 45 and older, as those demographics have shown high risks of fatal overdose; that heavily impacted neighborhoods receive prevention help; and that people getting mental health services be screened for substance abuse.

The report notes that Allegheny County Jail inmates are now offered takehome kits of the opioid-reversal drug naloxone, and that the jail has given some inmates the drug Vivitrol, which quells the craving for narcotics. The report adds that the jail does not yet offer medication-assisted treatment for addiction, except to pregnant women.