DALTON, Ga. — “I have a nephew who overdosed (on drugs) and was revived,” the commissioner of the state Department of Public Health said here recently. “He’s been clean for two years, holding a job and doing well. As I talk to other folks I hear some of the same stories.”

Dr. J. Patrick O’Neal was the speaker during a meeting of the North Georgia Healthcare Coalition at the Dalton Convention Center. The coalition consists of agencies in Georgia Hospital Association Region A that coordinate emergency response plans. The region includes Catoosa, Dade, Fannin, Gilmer, Gordon, Murray, Pickens, Walker and Whitfield counties.

O’Neal’s topic was “Opioid Crisis in Georgia, Public Health’s Role.”

“I think it impacts every single family in Georgia in some way,” he said. “For me, it’s personal.”

O’Neal asked those in the audience to “look deep into your family history” and they may also see personal reasons for working to combat the opioid crisis. He said if something is not done to curb the opioid and addictive disease crisis in Georgia soon, “we’re going to be in really bad shape.”

“We don’t have the data yet, but it’s looking like the number of overdose deaths we had in 2017, particularly opioid, may exceed deaths we have from car crashes,” he said.

“Most of those addictions start with prescription drugs,” O’Neal said. “I can tell you that as a doctor we are having to rethink the way we treat pain.”

He shared that after a surgery in February a neurosurgeon prescribed him 60 Percocet pills. He said physicians have gotten in the habit of writing large prescriptions for drugs that have the “potential to cause addiction.”

“I was only in the hospital 29 hours and missed three days from work,” he said. “The only thing I took were some Tylenol. I didn’t take those Percocet, I didn’t need them.”

O’Neal said changes to the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program that will go into effect July 1 in Georgia will be beneficial. The program is an “electronic database used to monitor the prescribing and dispensing of controlled substances,” the Department of Public Health website states. “The program can help eliminate duplicative prescribing and overprescribing of controlled substances and provide a prescriber or pharmacist with critical information regarding a patient’s controlled substance prescription history and protect patients at risk of abuse.”

O’Neal said a patient may have been to two other physicians in the last week for prescriptions without a physician knowing.

“There needs to be a way that physicians can look and say ‘I don’t think I need to prescribe that because you’ve already had five in the last 10 days from numerous doctors,'” he said. “‘I need to offer to get you some help instead.'”

Sheila Pierce, director of the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program, said a three-year grant will help in battling the opioid crisis. In 2016 the Department of Public Health received a grant from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for $294,826. “The Data Driven Prevention Initiative helps support efforts to end the opioid overdose epidemic in the United States,” the CDC website states.

Pierce said the initiative helps identify stakeholders throughout Georgia who work together to develop a statewide, comprehensive, strategic plan to address the opioid crisis.

“There were (changes) in the 2017 Legislature (House Bill 249) that moved the (monitoring) program,” Pierce said. “It moved from one state agency to another; previously, patients voluntarily registered but with the changes it’s a requirement.”

Pierce said the changes will also allow the Department of Public Health to share information with law enforcement officers in other states.

“We think that these improvements are going to help us create a firm foundation in our program,” Pierce said. “It isn’t getting us to where we want to be but it’s certainly putting us on a great path.”

“The purpose of the North Georgia Healthcare Coalition is to serve as a unifying structure across the counties of Georgia’s Hospital Association Region A,” Jennifer King, public information officer and risk communicator with the North Georgia Health District, said in an email.

King said it’s a way to help “collaborate and coordinate health care resources, plans, and facilitate communication among health care stakeholders.” Meetings are held quarterly in Dalton.