by Colin Konschak, FACHE, Chief Executive Officer, Divurgent Dave Levin, MD, Chief Medical Officer, Sansoro Health
On a Saturday in late March 2018, millions of people mobilized and marched with one voice to say “Enough!” to gun violence. The impetus of this movement was a startling statistic– on average, 96 people die from guns in the United States every day. A tragic number, making it a problem worth solving. Now consider that the tragic statistic of daily gun-related deaths is exceeded by those associated with the Opioid crisis. In 2016, an average of 116 deaths every day in America involved opioids.1 In that year, 42,249 drug fatalities in America involved opioids, about 66 percent of the total of the 63,600 lives lost that year to drug overdose. It was the deadliest year so far of a national public health crisis of opioid addiction.2 These numbers are frightening, especially when considering that 2.1 million people misused opioids for the first time estimated in 2016. Figure 1: Opioid Epidemic Statistics
We as a country are a long way away from ending this crisis, but many believe health information technology will be a major part of the solution. This whitepaper explores some of uses of health IT in the opioid crisis, the roles it can play, and what needs to be done to make the use of health IT more effective in the fight. Download the full whitepaper The Evolving Role of Health IT in Fighting the Opioid Crisis
