Pubdate: Tue, 06 Feb 2001
Source: Ft. Worth Star-Telegram (TX)
Copyright: 2001 Star-Telegram, Fort Worth, Texas
Contact:  400 W. Seventh Street, Fort Worth, Texas 76102
Website: http://www.star-telegram.com/
Forum: http://www.star-telegram.com/comm/forums/
Author: Karen Brooks

FUNDS SOUGHT FOR ANALYZING OD REPORTS

AUSTIN -- The state's poison-control network is asking for $1 million for a 
statewide computer system and a full-time epidemiologist to analyze reports 
of illegal drug overdoses from Texas health care facilities.

Prompted by a spate of heroin-related deaths in North Texas in the late 
1990s, legislation passed in 1999 requires hospitals and clinics to report 
overdoses to one of the six regional poison centers. But lawmakers didn't 
provide any money for record keeping.

With no reliable way to process the information -- track trends, offer 
real-time numbers and follow up with hospitals to verify numbers -- its 
usefulness is limited, public health officials said. "We're going to be 
reporting regardless, but it's the difference between driving a new car and 
driving a beat-up Camaro," said toxicologist Greene Shepherd, acting 
director of the North Texas Poison Center in Dallas.

And if the numbers don't prove useful, it's difficult to get full 
participation from hospitals -- rendering the statistics incomplete, said 
Dennis Perrotta, an epidemiologist at the Texas Department of Health in 
Austin and the agency's poison-control network liaison. The epidemiologist 
would work at the Texas Department of Health, interpreting the numbers and 
ferreting out the meaning behind the statistics, Perrotta said.

"We want somebody like this to enable us to analyze this information, 
because collecting information and doing nothing with it is a waste of 
time," he said.

The computer network, which would cost $950,000, would be valuable for 
real-time reporting of statistics -- avoiding a months-long lag time, said 
Bill Watson, managing director and clinical professor at the South Texas 
Poison Center and one of the officials overseeing the law's implementation.

The statewide numbers for 2000 arrived in Watson's office in late January. 
He'll use the statistics to gauge the law's effectiveness and develop a 
baseline for tracking trends.

Even in the early stages, the statistics strengthen the overall picture of 
drug use and abuse in Texas, researchers say.

Jane Maxwell of the Texas Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse said 
information from hospitals and clinics in conjunction with her research 
bolster the big picture.

"I find it a wonderful data source, and I'm using it more and more in my 
work," Maxwell said. The goal is to start issuing regular reports on the 
data within the next year, after poison-control officials tie up logistical 
loose ends: who would get the data and what kind of number-crunching is 
involved, Shepherd said.

Hospital participation is key.

A year ago, about 15 percent of Texas' hospitals and clinics reported 
overdoses; now, that's increased to between 50 percent and 60 percent.

Hospitals that don't comply can be fined, but that usually isn't enforced 
- -- similar to laws governing mandatory reporting of other illnesses to 
state health authorities, Shepherd said.

Hospitals faced some of the earliest challenges in implementing the law.

They had to determine how to define an overdose and then how to efficiently 
report it without taking valuable personnel time away from the emergency 
room -- where most overdose cases come in, hospital officials said.

For each case, the report must include the date of the incident, the age 
and gender of the patient, the drug, symptoms and treatment.

"We found that the requirement was going to be extremely tedious until we 
came up with a mechanism of faxing the information to poison control," said 
Grace Croft, director of emergency services at Harris Methodist HEB.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens