Health News
- Half Again As Many Kentucky Newborns Were Hospitalized For Drug Dependency Last Year As The Year Before
Mother Samantha Adams and her newborn Leopoldo Bautista, 10 days old, spend quality time inside the Louisville Norton Healthcare child care center for children experiencing drug withdrawal. (Photo by Alton Strupp, The Courier-Journal)Increasing drug...
- Kentucky Led The Nation In Hepatitis C Cases In 2013; State's Rate Rose 357 Percent From 2007 To 2011
By Tim Mandell Kentucky Health News Kentucky had the nation's highest rate of hepatitis C in 2013, with 5.1 cases per every 100,000 people, says a report by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As many as 3.5 million people...
- Drug Developed To Treat Addiction Is Being Abused, So Much That Clinics Have Been Opened To Sell It
"Suboxone, a popular and highly touted medicine designed to get people off opioids such as painkillers and heroin, is increasingly being abused, sold on the streets and inappropriately prescribed, according to doctors and drug control and law enforcement...
- Managed-care Doctor Creates Process To Steer Pregnant Medicaid Recipients Who Are Using Dangerous Drugs Into Treatment
When Dr. Jeremy Corbett of Lexington found that "nearly one in five pregnant women enrolled in the Medicaid managed-care program where he works were using narcotics or other harmful drugs," he tackled the problem. As medical director of the...
- Comprehensive Series Looks At New Angle Of Prescription Pain Pill Epidemic: Addicted Newborns
The Courier-Journal's health reporter, Laura Ungar, is again delving into the prescription pain-pill epidemic in Kentucky, this time focusing on babies who are born addicted. For any reporter interested in writing stories about prescription pill...
Health News
Number of Kentucky babies born addicted keeps rising quickly as heroin replaces harder-to-get prescription painkillers
Despite the crackdown on prescription painkillers, more Kentucky babies are being born addicted, "fueled by a recent spike in heroin use," much of it by people who have found prescription painkillers harder to get, Laura Ungar reports for The Courier-Journal.
"The state has seen hospitalizations for drug-dependent newborns soar nearly 30 fold in a little more than a decade ? from 28 in 2000 to 824 in 2012, according to a recent drug report from the Kentucky Injury Prevention and Research Center. Preliminary figures suggest that number will surpass 900 in 2013, according to state officials," Ungar reports, in a follow-up to a series she did on the state's prescription-drug abuse problems in 2012.
"The financial cost is also high ? and climbing exponentially," Ungar writes. "Hospital charges for drug-dependent babies in Kentucky rose from $200,000 in 2000 to $40.2 million in 2012, with $34.9 million that year paid for by government Medicaid," nearly 30 percent of which comes from Kentucky taxpayers.
"Although there are no state-by-state statistics, Dr. Henrietta Bada, a neonatal-perinatal medicine doctor at the University of Kentucky, said she believes Kentucky has one of the nation?s worst problems with drug-dependent babies." the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that U.S. hospitalizations for drug-dependent babies rose 330 percent from 2000 to 2009; "Kentucky?s hospitalizations rose more than 1,400 percent during that same time," but the state has "only 55 treatment centers serving pregnant and postpartum women, the vast majority outpatient facilities," Ungar reports. That's ?a fraction of what we need,? Attorney General Jack Conway told her.
"The financial cost is also high ? and climbing exponentially," Ungar writes. "Hospital charges for drug-dependent babies in Kentucky rose from $200,000 in 2000 to $40.2 million in 2012, with $34.9 million that year paid for by government Medicaid," nearly 30 percent of which comes from Kentucky taxpayers.
"Although there are no state-by-state statistics, Dr. Henrietta Bada, a neonatal-perinatal medicine doctor at the University of Kentucky, said she believes Kentucky has one of the nation?s worst problems with drug-dependent babies." the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that U.S. hospitalizations for drug-dependent babies rose 330 percent from 2000 to 2009; "Kentucky?s hospitalizations rose more than 1,400 percent during that same time," but the state has "only 55 treatment centers serving pregnant and postpartum women, the vast majority outpatient facilities," Ungar reports. That's ?a fraction of what we need,? Attorney General Jack Conway told her.
- Half Again As Many Kentucky Newborns Were Hospitalized For Drug Dependency Last Year As The Year Before
Mother Samantha Adams and her newborn Leopoldo Bautista, 10 days old, spend quality time inside the Louisville Norton Healthcare child care center for children experiencing drug withdrawal. (Photo by Alton Strupp, The Courier-Journal)Increasing drug...
- Kentucky Led The Nation In Hepatitis C Cases In 2013; State's Rate Rose 357 Percent From 2007 To 2011
By Tim Mandell Kentucky Health News Kentucky had the nation's highest rate of hepatitis C in 2013, with 5.1 cases per every 100,000 people, says a report by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As many as 3.5 million people...
- Drug Developed To Treat Addiction Is Being Abused, So Much That Clinics Have Been Opened To Sell It
"Suboxone, a popular and highly touted medicine designed to get people off opioids such as painkillers and heroin, is increasingly being abused, sold on the streets and inappropriately prescribed, according to doctors and drug control and law enforcement...
- Managed-care Doctor Creates Process To Steer Pregnant Medicaid Recipients Who Are Using Dangerous Drugs Into Treatment
When Dr. Jeremy Corbett of Lexington found that "nearly one in five pregnant women enrolled in the Medicaid managed-care program where he works were using narcotics or other harmful drugs," he tackled the problem. As medical director of the...
- Comprehensive Series Looks At New Angle Of Prescription Pain Pill Epidemic: Addicted Newborns
The Courier-Journal's health reporter, Laura Ungar, is again delving into the prescription pain-pill epidemic in Kentucky, this time focusing on babies who are born addicted. For any reporter interested in writing stories about prescription pill...