JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Florida Blue Medicare is rolling out a new program that will help to reduce overdose deaths and educate our community about that safe use of opioids.
Opioid related medical emergencies are a growing and consistent problem here across the state, including Jacksonville. Jacksonville Fire Rescue was dispatched to almost 5,000 suspected opioid-related emergencies in 2021. The number was about the same for 2020.
One of the reasons behind the increase is fentanyl, which has become a commonly prescribed synthetic drug used for pain treatment. It's up to 100 times more powerful than morphine.
“Individuals were not making the connection between the drugs that they may be taking on a daily basis, and the potential for abuse and harmful effects. So by educating them about what those drugs are…that's the one of the things that caused the significant impact that we saw from this study," said Dr. Cynthia Griffin, Vice President of Medicare pharmacy programs for Florida Blue.
To address this problem, Florida Blue Medicare created a pilot program, completed through a collaboration with pharmacy benefit manager Prime Therapeutics, that identifies members who have been prescribed opioids and are considered at-risk for addiction. There members were identified using predictive modeling based on member claims data and Prime’s opioid registry.
By identifying these users earlier on and connecting them with educational material and doing virtual check-ups during the duration of their prescription, leaders behind this program say new opioid users consumed less and stopped earlier.
This, leaders believe, will contribute to a lower risk of addiction in the community and ultimately saves lives.
“Once we identify an individual that we believe will benefit from the program, we make that outreach phone call to them, we also talk with their doctor about what we have spoken to the member about, and that combination of member education as well as provider education, we believe will be one of the keys to success going forward," Dr. Griffin said.
Future plans include automatically enrolling opioid users that use Medicare into the management programs to help more members and their families.