Hello, I have attached my previous paper, rubric, and matrix template. My topic is Overdose and the impact on Healthcare. My main focus/PICOT question “In patients with opioid-related hospital stays,

Overdose and the Impact on Health Care

Chamberlain University College of Nursing

NR 449 Evidence Based Practice

Overdose and the Impact on Health Care

The opioid overdose has been gaining attention in the nation. Despite the efforts of the healthcare system to help people, the overdose death rates continue to increase. Opioid overdose is drastically increasing in the United States and as a result many people are dying from it. The national public health declared an opioid epidemic emergency on October 26th, 2017 (Boté, 2019). Approximately 130 Americans die daily as a consequence of opioid overdose (Boté, 2019). It is clearly that misusage of opioids taking the lives of many Americans. How has this opioid epidemic affected our healthcare? The purpose of the following paper is meant to figure the impact of health care and the public health.

Clinical Question

The current opioid pandemic is causing many problems. These include death and suicide, risk of neonatal abstinence syndrome, impacts the safety of our first responders and creates and economic hardship due to prescription abuse (Walters et al., 2022). The focus of our group’s work is to determine how these issues affect the healthcare and the public health. The focus of this research is to target how opioid overdose affects our healthcare system and the public health.

Respiratory depression is one the primary outcome as a result of opioid overdose (Boté, 2019). At this stage, the patient’s breathing becomes slow, or can stop. As a result, the patient can develop permanent brain damage, can go into coma, or even die. According to research, there was increase of 19% of overdose death among teenagers due to complications from respiratory complication (Boté, 2019). Another patient outcome from opioid misusage can lead to a risk of developing HIV and the transmission of hepatitis C. The CDC estimates 1 in 36 men and 1 in 23 women will have an HIV diagnosis in their lifetime (Boté, 2019). Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS) could be developed by infants as a result of opioid exposure. These infants could have complications fetal growth and preterm birth. It has been discovered NAS has increased by 433% from 2004 to 2014 (Boté, 2019). Lastly, the opioid pandemic creates an economic hardship to the United States. Some of these burdens include productivity loss, high healthcare cost, addiction treatments, and the approximate cost of criminal justice is 78.5 billion dollars (Boté, 2019). I utilized the PICOT acronym to develop a question that answers how opioid addiction affect our healthcare. The question I developed is “In patients with opioid-related hospital stays, how does opioid-related spending compared to other hospital-stay visits, affects the hospital financially and interfere with patient’s outcome?” The purpose of this paper is to obtain evidence-based practice information, through the research process, to support the importance of this study in to answer the PICOT question.

Levels of Evidence

The PICOT question that was asked could be identified as harm/etiology. We want to know whether opioid-related hospital stays affect the hospital financially which could ultimately cause harm to other hospital visits. This could push the hospital to cut back on some supplies due to the high spending with these patients. The adequate research approach would be a longitudinal-cohort study. The longitudinal research takes variables and gathers data for short or long period time (Mallow et al., 2018). This data could be compared within the same hospital and see how spending is spread out among hospital visits. The information could also be obtained and compared to other hospitals.

Another type of study that could be perform to answer or PICOT question would be an observational study. This type of evidence billing data could be obtained from different setting and compared among them (Mallow et al., 2018). This study could also provide us with different tables that would separate admission source, discharge destination, payer, hospital stay, and other comorbidities (Mallow et al., 2018).

Search Strategy

In order to complete my research on my topic, the search terms I utilized included “opioid overdose in the United States,” “impact of overdose in the healthcare system,” “research of opioid overdose,” “treatment of opioid addiction,” “hospital cost for opioid-related visits,” “what are the causes of opioid addiction,” “effects of opioid overdose on the public health,” and “opioid epidemic in the United States.” The results I received included both evidence-based articles and not evidence-based articles. I came across various articles from early 2000s, Wikipedia, forums from random people, and scholarly articles from at least 5 years old of publication.

I first initiated to find evidence-based research through google and only found non-scholarly information. I proceeded with the Chamberlain University library and linked my research with my PICOT question. The results I received from here included NCBI, PubMed, Google Scholar. I made sure my research parameters included evidence-based scholarly articles only and 5 years of publication from current date. I was able to obtain many articles with information that relates to PICOT question. I came across many articles and therefore I decided to refine my search. I needed to make sure I was only highlighting articles. I excluded any books and videos.

Relevant Articles

After successfully finding my articles, I came across two that are completely relevant to my research. The first article is titled “U.S. Opioid Epidemic: Epidemic: Impact on Public Health and Review of Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs)” by Boté (2019). This article explores the consequences of opioid overuse, mortalities, and the effects of health care and public health. This article highlights with great detail the effects of the opioid epidemic in the United States. It explains the economic burden that is placed in the nation by the influx of opioid-related hospital stays. The second article I selected is titled “Geographic variation in hospital costs, payments, and length of stay for opioid-related hospital visits in the USA” by Mallow et al., (2018). This article explains the hospital costs in relation to opioid usage. It demonstrates through an observational study how the nation is exceeding $100 billion annually in relations to opioid crisis. The comparison of hospital all came to the results of opioid crisis leading to a financial burden.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the opioid epidemic in the United States has been declared as a public health emergency. This is dues to the amount of people that die from it, suicide rates, effect on exposed infants, and the economic burden that has created in our nation. It is clear that this crisis needs to be addressed so that the nation can recover. Both the healthcare system and the public health have been affected by this epidemic. Furthermore, this study primarily focuses on the cost of opioid-related hospital stays in relation to other hospital visits. It has been proven, through evidence-based articles, that the nation has spent approximately $100 billion annually which surpasses other hospital stays.

References

Boté S. H. (2019). U.S. Opioid Epidemic: Impact on Public Health and Review of Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs). Online journal of public health informatics, 11(2), e18. https://doi.org/10.5210/ojphi.v11i2.10113

Mallow, P. J., Belk, K. W., Topmiller, M., & Strassels, S. A. (2018). Geographic variation in hospital costs, payments, and length of stay for opioid-related hospital visits in the USA. Journal of pain research, 11, 3079–3088. https://doi.org/10.2147/JPR.S184724

Walters, S. M., Bolinski, R. S., Almirol, E., Grundy, S., Fletcher, S., Schneider, J., Friedman, S. R., Ouellet, L. J., Ompad, D. C., Jenkins, W., & Pho, M. T. (2022). Structural and community changes during COVID-19 and their effects on overdose precursors among rural people who use drugs: a mixed-methods analysis. Addiction science & clinical practice, 17(1), 24. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13722-022-00303-8