Limits on pain pills take effect
Ohioans and their medical-care providers face stricter limits on pain-pill prescriptions beginning Thursday as the state seeks to choke off abuse leading to opioid addiction.
Likening opioid pain prescriptions to a “loaded gun,” Gov. John Kasich said the restrictions hold the promise of preventing abuse and keeping excess pain pills off Ohio’s streets.
The new requirements prohibit doctors, dentists and others from prescribing more than seven days of opioids — five days for minors
— for treatment of pain.
Refills can be prescribed only if physicians and others document the need for extending pain-relief medication.
Medical-licensing and pharmacy boards are monitoring the prescribing of opioids with an eye toward cracking down on medical professionals who prescribe opioids without medical justification.
“You violate these guidelines and the medical board will come after you,” Kasich said of physicians who could face the loss of their licenses.
The limits do not apply to opioids prescribed for cancer, palliative care, end-of-life care and medication-assisted treatment for addiction.
The heads of the medical, nursing and pharmacy boards all joined Kasich in saying the new limits will help Ohio rein in an out-of-control opioid crisis that kills thousands each year.
“There is some light shining through right now,” Kasich said. Voluntary prescribing guidelines have cut the number of overdose deaths from opioid prescriptions from 667 in 2015 to 564 in 2016, he said.
Also, the number of opioid prescriptions have dropped by 20 percent, or 109 million doses, since 2012, said Dr. Mark Hurst, medical director of the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services.
State officials say 74 percent of those who died from drug overdoses in 2015 previously had received legally prescribed opioids.
Kasich said the number of deaths from heroin also is leveling off, but cautioned, “We’re not out of the woods.” Fentanyl, a powerful manmade opioid, increasingly is killing more Ohioans as it is laced into cocaine and other drugs, the governor said.
The governor spoke Thursday before the state’s 2016 unintentional drug-overdose death total — 4,050, an increase of 33 percent from 2015 —was announced. Fentanyl and its derivatives were responsible for 58 percent of deaths, up from only 4 percent in 2013.
A federal grant will help pay for a campaign called “Take Charge Ohio” that will begin in October and seek to educate medical professionals and patients about alternatives to pills to treating pain.
The Kasich administration says Ohio spends $1 billion a year to fight opioids, with about two-thirds of that coming from Medicaid coverage of drug-addiction treatment for poor Ohioans. The legislature added nearly $180 million of additional funding in the new two-year budget.
Kasich continues to defend his expansion of Medicaid to more than 700,000 additional Ohioans to help combat drug addiction.
“Think about where Ohio would be … if we hadn’t expanded Medicaid. To kind of keep debating this and wringing our hands because we got some right-wingers somewhere who want to kill this program ... if we cut this money off, if you take this money away, you will not have the resources needed.”