1/Suicides that follow prescription opioid reduction are a tragedy we need to discuss openly, and mainstream reporters almost never do.

This article by @DrewQJoseph is commendable.

Our work to learn from families who have suffered these losses is linked in the next tweet
2/Our team at @UABNews has been running a preliminary version of a larger planned study, a survey to reach family survivors to learn about these tragedies one by one, like safety investigators would an airplane crash. We think that is the place to start. It is called CSI:OPIOIDs Image
3/As a clinician, I have been advocating to address these losses since 2016.

In 2018, I began urging federal study of the individual suicides, because large database statistics, concerning as they are, don’t reveal the circumstances around losses. We have to look closely.
4/Urging that we study the individual deaths, which felt imperative to me, drew pushback as it cut against advocacy & stories on prior excess prescribing

In this 2018 Lown Conference video, you will see me contending with that pushback at minute 27-38:
5/In that conference, Dr Adriane Fugh Berman argued there was insufficient basis for a public agency to study the suicides

I was truly surprised to hear that.

(Her identity was masked in the edit out of respect for the conference hosts, but after 3 years, seems unnecessary)
6/We began with, & are continuing, a pilot study to establish contact with families who have suffered the loss. We are a team of suicide, pain and health service researchers including Dr Thomas Joiner of FSU. @AllysonVarley @speakingabtpain @AJ_Gordon @BethDarnall & of course, me
7/Over the coming year, we will be expanding this work to allow us to engage the families more deeply and to learn their stories, to learn what really happened, and to provide recommendations to policymakers. Please follow us to learn more as we develop this
8/The single most troubling aspect of these suicides, to me at least, is that they are still draped in secrecy.

We can only address this threat to safety of patients if we speak openly and ask questions without prejudging the answers.

Thanks @DrewQJoseph & @statnews /fin

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More from @StefanKertesz

14 Nov
@Jinxthejjinx @ChadDKollas @OregonAdvocate @PainMedJournal @LabGirl_Chloe @supportprop 1/I see this paper as direct, and not one that is terribly supportive of tapering policies (and it's good to report this): it's clear from this report that taper often fails, and that switch to buprenorphine helps some, and at least as often fails with others.
@Jinxthejjinx @ChadDKollas @OregonAdvocate @PainMedJournal @LabGirl_Chloe @supportprop 2/Here, in the paper we see that when high dose patients are referred, 36% leave before or after taper initiation. Wait for the pain results, next This is a chart showing 801 patients with opioid receipt wer
@Jinxthejjinx @ChadDKollas @OregonAdvocate @PainMedJournal @LabGirl_Chloe @supportprop 3/Here it says that among the subset of 89 who got all the way below 90 MME, the majority (52%) had ⬆️ of pain, but 24% had no change and 24% had ⬇️ of pain. This means that taper may help some pain, but more often it does the opposite. That's the data.
Read 9 tweets
13 Nov
1/This is a sobering, important article, with devastating observations from a formerly homeless Veteran. Mailing medication to someone who is homeless? Yikes.

Let’s learn from the unfavorable experiences.

(Research on that in next tweet)
2/Our research finds that persons who are homeless, Veteran or not, are often subject to misunderstanding or stigma, and that aspirations for what makes care good are not interchangeable with mainstream concepts - @AllysonVarley journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.117…
3/In large VA-funded research studies. we find that intentional efforts to tailor the design & delivery of primary care for persons experiencing homelessness, prevents unfavorable experiences in care! journals.lww.com/lww-medicalcar…
Read 5 tweets
11 Nov
1/Listening to @1a "Against the Pain" - @1a is to be commented for covering this issue Hats off.

I wish to share a thought on a form of bias built into NARXCare as it is obvious, correctable, and harms patients.
wamu.org/story/21/11/11…
2/Dr. Nishi Rawat of Bamboo Health (provider of the NARXCare algorithm to assess overdose risk) describes the NARXCare product they put onto the screens of doctors (via Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs) as an "objective summary". About that...
3/Dr. Rawat's definition of NARXCare covers 2 distinct function. One is a graphic summary of the Rx's received by a patient (if the data are accurate, this is helpful).
But the concerning one is an "Overdose Risk Score"
Read 16 tweets
4 Nov
1/Join us for "Research to Measure What Matters in Primary Care for Persons Experiencing Homelessness: What's the Point, Really?"

@HarvardChanSPH Initiative on Health & Homelessness
Register online for our event Wed 11/10, 1pm EST
Let me offer a brief 🧵:
2/I began focusing on homeless patients' views of care after working in Boston's shelters.

"Wow!" I thought "much of what we do we doesn't look good with traditional ways of measuring quality of care!"

My co-presenter Dr. Roncarati has >15 yrs with the @BHCHP Street Team
3/Standard quality of care metrics (visit counts, blood pressure checks) seem good

but what if what we homeless health clinicians *really focus on* is:

"Spending hours to build trust with a person who has been traumatized by repeated bad experiences in health care?"?
Read 9 tweets
3 Nov
1/It is bad that clinician performance on matters related to the opioid crisis is *still* being measured in terms of # of opioid prescriptions.
These metrics, which ape prior metrics that drove the original⬆️ reject the approach we normally require for measuring quality of care
2. To be clear. Optimal health care metrics require
a) clear denominator of eligible patients with the condition
b) clear evidence that the treatment's provision is wholly good or its nonprovision wholly bad
c)evidence that imposing the metric leads to improvements in health
3. For example, a metric such as "provision of cervical cancer screening" would be BAD if it includes persons with no cervix either because of hysterectomy, or because they are cis-male.
Read 11 tweets
2 Nov
1/This report on the homeless “sweep” at Boston’s Mass & Cass highlights a tragedy to which the city contributes, and some helpful points for people thinking about unsheltered homelessness wgbh.org/news/local-new…
2/The City’s accumulation of persons who are unsheltered partly results from the City’s closure of its Long Island Shelter, which was often used by people with drug use disorder - I used to work there Image
3/But it is also true many people really do not tolerate congregate shelters at all. Close quarters with people who might be intoxicated or paranoid is actually not an easy thing.
Read 8 tweets

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