The Utah House passed a bill on Friday designed to deal with the state’s opioid abuse problem. It would give medical professionals more training on substance use disorders.
Before the current legislative session, Republican Representative Steve Eliason met with former directors of the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institutes of Health.
"I said, if there’s one thing we could do to address our opioid overdose problem, what would it be? And it’s this bill," Eliason said.
Eliason’s bill would get doctors, nurses and other health professionals trained on a program called SBIRT. It stands for Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment. Beyond that jargony title, it could have a big impact.
SBIRT is a short training that would help people who prescribe drugs to recognize the signs of substance use disorders and teach them how to respond if they do. In addition to opioids, it’s used for alcohol and other types of drug abuse.
Eliason says, while SBIRT is currently taught at the University of Utah medical, pharmacy and nursing schools, many doctors never got it.
"It’s just that a lot of healthcare professionals, when they went through their training this wasn’t available at the time," Eliason said.
The training would happen when doctors renew their licenses in the state and it would allow them to be reimbursed after they got it.
"It’s not gonna be the silver bullet but it does get every physician in the state trained on an evidence-based program for substance use disorder," he said.
The bill passed through the Utah House with unanimous support and sent it to the Senate for consideration.