Members of the Oklahoma Commission on Opioid Abuse will recess over the summer but plan to meet again in the fall and ask lawmakers to extend the commission.
The commission is due to sunset in July but has a "wind down" period of a few months. Its focus will shift to lessening demand for opioids, including asking insurance companies to cover alternative pain treatments, especially for patients with high deductibles or chronic injuries.
Commission member Dr. Layne Subera said a woman he knows lost her insurance and needs back surgery.
"She’s lost her job because of it, can’t afford $1,500 to pay COBRA going forward and so it seems like there’s a lot of vulnerable people out there yet that could really be helped if we were to pursue some of these other angles," Subera said.
State Mental Health Commissioner Terri White said an important gap left to address is treatment access for people who may not end up in drug court, especially those in rural areas or who will likely never commit a crime.
"Except if we continue to leave their addiction untreated, if at some point they can no longer get the medications that they are addicted to — and shouldn’t get the medications they are addicted to but they can’t get treatment, that’s when you start seeing the shift to heroin and other things. And so it’s critical that we get to that population before they ever need a drug court," White said.
Oklahoma Association of Nurse Anesthetists President Jenny Schmitt wants a seat at the table.
"New research in anesthesia is coming out utilizing different non-opioid and opioid-sparing techniques that decrease opiate consumption before surgery, during surgery and the immediate postoperative period," Schmitt said. "So then when patients are discharged home from the hospital, the amount of narcotics that they’re requiring is dramatically decreased."
Most of the commission’s recommendations made into law this year aim to decrease opioid supply.