Nationwide opioid shortage not impacting EIRMC

We often talk about the opioid crisis, but now there’s a new problem. Hospitals nationwide are experiencing a shortage. Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center in Idaho Falls isn’t being negatively impacted.

“There is a nationwide shortage of injectable opioid medication,” Clint Rohner explained. “So the thing that we think of is major painkillers. The pills are available but the IV form is not.”

At EIRMC they say management is key.

“We haven’t canceled patients, we don’t have people going in pain, but we don’t want the next patient to have that problem,” Rohner said. “So what we’re trying to do is be conservative and use it appropriately. How do we use medications that are the ibuprofen, the Tylenol of the world for those patients that we would historically give them a couple milligrams of IV morphine. We don’t need to do that because we’re going to conserve that for the serious patient that comes in with a broken arm.”

They’re also using alternative medicine in some cases.

“Let’s treat them in a different way, maybe we can use massage, music therapy,” explained Rohner. “Maybe we can do heat or cold therapy and those type of things. What that allows me to do is two things, decrease the amount of opioids that we’re dumping into the population or using in the population and allows me to stretch it. For the patients that really need it.”

Rohner says conservation could help the current opioid crisis.

“As we take a harder look at ourselves and how we treat patients as we treat patients so they’re not in pain that they are taken care of and are getting the great care that they deserve. We can still do things to decrease the opportunity to have those bad side effects,” said Rohner.

EIRMC says it was prepared months in advance for the shortage and started conserving early.