Veterans Particularly Prone To Being Swept Up In Opioid Epidemic
And despite efforts to combat opioid addiction for area veterans, the San Diego VA medical system still lands roughly in the middle of the nationwide VA spectrum of opioid safety scores.
The San Diego Union-Tribune:
Overprescribed: Veterans And The Painkiller Problem
San Diego County is home to the country’s biggest cluster of post-9/11 veterans. Nationally, one in five of these vets has been prescribed an opioid, roughly twice the rate as for much older vets, according to a VA study. The San Diego VA has reduced the number of patients receiving prescriptions for habit-forming painkillers by roughly a third during what’s been a nearly four-year push, which mirrors the agency’s similar efforts nationwide. And the number of high-dose painkiller prescriptions — 100 mg per day or more — is down by half among San Diego VA patients, slightly beating the national VA average. (Steele, 3/2)