Will Utah Turn the Tide on the Opioid Epidemic?

As the Bee has documented, Utah is one of the states hardest hit by the national opioid epidemic. Opioid deaths in Utah have risen 400% from 2000 to 2014. Two significant events might help turn the tide.

One, Intermountain Healthcare became the first hospital system in the United States to announce a goal to significantly slash opioid prescriptions. By 2018, it plans to cut opioid prescriptions by 40%. Other Utah hospitals likely will follow suit.

If prescription opioid users move to heroin when their prescriptions are cut off, Utah’s crisis will be exacerbated. A significant majority (80%) of people who inject drugs (PWID) started by abusing prescription opioids. As noted in this Bee article, injection drugs wreak havoc on lives and Medicaid coffers in Utah because of HIV, hepatitis C and other diseases spread through the sharing of syringes, cookers, and other paraphernalia.

Because of Utah’s high rate of intravenous drug use, the CDC already has identified parts of Utah as being at risk for an HIV/AIDS outbreak. Such concerns would be amplified were opioid-addicted prescriptions users to be cut off without treatment. Fortunately, Utah received welcome news on this front.

Two, the Trump administration approved a Utah-specific Medicaid waiver that will significantly increase the availability of treatment beds in Utah. Utah’s waiver request had languished in Washington, D.C., since July 2016. The waiver will fund an additional 180 treatment beds at a cost of $10,000,000/year. As documented in this Bee article, the additional treatment beds provide an answer to one of Operation Rio Grande’s biggest questions.