Archive for August 2018

Originally Published in New York Times | Full Story Link Here August 27, 2018 Almost 64,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2016, a shocking 54 percent increase since 2012. Dangerous opioids such as heroin and fentanyl contributed to two-thirds of the deaths. This killer knows no geographic, socioeconomic or age limits. It strikes city…

Originally Published in Politico | Full Story Link Here August 25, 2018 CRANSTON, R.I. — By the time police caught Paul Roussell with heroin last summer, the 58-year-old lobster fisherman had been addicted to the drug for almost 10 years. He’d gone from sniffing two bags of heroin a day to 10, then as many as…

Originally Published in New York Times | Full Story Link Here August 24, 2018 The opioid epidemic is far from contained — the national death toll from drug overdoses climbed to a record high last year. But some states and cities are bucking the trend and showing how governments can get a grip on the worst drug…

Originally Published in HealthIT Analytics | Full Story Link Here September 06, 2017 “This sort of data analytics team can tell us important information about prescription opioids—like which physicians are writing opioid prescriptions at a rate that far exceeds their peers; how many of a doctor’s patients died within 60 days of an opioid prescription;…