County officials see reason to hope as opioid deaths drop in 2017

Buffalo News - 2/27/2018

Feb. 27--The number of Erie County residents who died from opioid drug overdoses fell last year, reversing a lethal body count trend for the first time since 2013.

The number of deaths remains high, though not as high as once projected. The Health Department recorded 268 suspected and confirmed opioid-related drug deaths in 2017. That's a drop of more than 10 percent from 2016 but still higher than the number in 2015.

More than a thousand Erie County residents have died from opioid-related drug use in the past five years.

"We are not at the end of the opiate epidemic in Erie County. There's no doubt about that," said County Executive Mark Poloncarz at a Tuesday morning press conference. "But I think we're at the beginning of the end."

Though the numbers of deaths are still high, he said Erie County is starting to see success where many other communities are still failing.

"The work we've done is showing progress, and the best progress we can ever make is saving lives," he said.

Poloncarz has also pushed back against a report from Republican congressional staffers with the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that outlined how the federal Medicaid program contributed to the nationwide opioid crisis.

The report, "Drugs for Dollars: How Medicaid Helps Fuel the Opioid Epidemic," highlighted how increased access to addictive pain-killing drugs and Medicaid-related fraud and crime was a factor -- though not the only factor -- in the growing drug-related death toll.

Drug overdose deaths rose at a rate nearly twice as fast in states that embraced Medicaid expansion, like New York, versus non-expansion states, the report stated.

Poloncarz sent a detailed critique to the Senate committee chairman, called the report "inaccurate" and issued a statement -- noticed and supported by some other national Medicaid experts -- saying the committee's report was built on old information and stereotypes used "to manufacture an incorrect viewpoint."

"Simply put, we have seen no evidence that the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act has fueled the opioid epidemic in Erie County, nor that Medicaid funding somehow fuels opioid addiction," Poloncarz said in a statement. "To make these claims with no supporting evidence is wrong and muddies the water on a very important public health topic."

Poloncarz letter to Johnson re Drugs for Dollars report

He also referred to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which showed annual U.S. opioid prescribing rates increased from 2006 to 2010, prior to Medicaid's expansion, and then decreased thereafter, including in the period following Medicaid's expansion in 2014.

Meanwhile, he said, the majority of overdose deaths in Erie County have been attributed to the street sale of fentanyl and fentanyl derivatives, which is far more potent and lethal than heroin and other prescription painkillers.

In New York State, the governor's I-STOP program has brought a halt to doctor shopping for duplicate opioid pain prescriptions. Poloncarz also referred to Erie County Medicaid data, which has shown that opioid prescriptions for the popular combination drug hydrocodone-acetaminophen has fallen considerably in recent years as more physicians are educated about the addictive properties of such drugs.

He and other experts also pointed out that Medicaid not only prescribes medication but provides important access to drug treatment programs designed to help address the growing epidemic.

Popular opioid painkiller falls from top ranks of prescribed drugs in Erie County

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