An Alternative to the Hospital Emergency Room for Persons with Substance Use Disorder or Severe Mental Illness By Lauren Moyer, LSCSW, LCSW Kansas City assessment and triage center provides short-term stabilization for up to 23 hours. In cities across the country, individuals with behavioral health issues routinely present at emergency departments or even worse are jailed. Such interventions rarely, if ever, change behavior or resolve a crisis.

Opioid-Related Deaths in the Kansas City Area - Jackson County Medical Examiner's office points to oxycodone, heroin, fentanyl as the leading cause. Opioids are a class of drugs that include the illicit drug heroin as well as the prescription pain relievers oxycodone, hydrocodone, codeine, morphine, fentanyl and other synthetic analogues just to name a few. Opioid drugs, typified by morphine, produce their pharmacological actions, including analgesia, by acting on receptors located on neuronal cell membranes. The presynaptic action of opioids to inhibit neurotransmitter release is considered to be their major effect on the nervous system. Deaths are usually attributed to respiratory depression.

Medication-First Approach to Treating Opioid Use Disorder Many studies show the effectiveness of medications over abstinence; primary care practices can provide treatment. By Doug Burgess, MD In the United States, drug overdoses, the majority of which are related to opiates, kill around 64,000 people every year.1 If current trends continue for the next five to six years, the number of drug overdose deaths in the 21st century will approach one million people. Present-day drug overdose deaths exceed those numbers seen during the peak of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. However, unlike the HIV/AIDS epidemic, deaths related to drug overdose have not fallen, even though highly effective treatments exist (Fig. 1). In fact, recent data indicates that from 2016-2017, deaths related to drug overdose have increased by 22% over the previous year.