AHA: Give Funds from Johnson & Johnson Opioid Lawsuit to Hospitals

August 28, 2019 - Hospitals and health systems should receive a portion of the $572 million fine Johnson & Johnson must pay for their role in the opioid crisis, the American Hospital Association (AHA) recently told an Oklahoma judge.

“America’s hospitals and health systems continue to address the devastating effects of the opioid epidemic on patients, families and communities. To ensure today’s ruling helps communities in need, we ask the judge to ensure that needed funds are directed to the hospitals and health systems that are on the forefront of caring for the victims of this epidemic,” the AHA said in a joint statement with the Oklahoma Hospital Association following Judge Thad Balkman’s August 26 ruling.

Balkman’s ruling ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay Oklahoma the multi-million dollar fine after ruling that the pharmaceutical company caused an opioid crisis that resulted in increased rates of addiction, overdose deaths, and neonatal abstinence syndrome in the state, according to national news sources.

The $572 million is just a fraction of the $17.5 billion originally requested from the state of Oklahoma, which argued that Johnson & Johnson’s aggressive marketing of opioids to providers and patients led to a public nuisance and thousands of deaths in the state.

The judge acknowledged that his penalty fell short of the state’s expectations, explaining that the fine would cover Oklahoma’s opioid recovery plan for a single year. The state plans to use the money to fund activities such as opioid use prevention and addiction treatment services.

Directing funds to hospitals and health systems could help Oklahoma address the opioid crisis on the frontline, the AHA and Oklahoma Hospital Association stressed in their statement.

“With additional resources, hospitals can broaden access to post-overdose treatment in emergency departments, increase training of physicians to treat substance use disorders, cover the costs of lengthy stays and follow-up care for infants with neonatal abstinence disorder, and invest in electronic health information systems to improve coordinated care and prevent overprescribing,” the associations wrote.

The AHA isn’t the only national leader calling for policymakers to steer funds from opioid settlements to hospitals. Earlier this month, West Virginia University President Gordon Gee and former Ohio Governor John Kasich launched a non-profit organization called “Citizens for Effective Opioid Treatment.”

Through the organization, Gee and Kasich aim to ensure potential funds from national opioid lawsuits go to the frontline and educate policymakers and the public about the impact the opioid crisis has had on healthcare infrastructure, the Associated Press reported.

“It’s an educational effort,” Gee told the national news source. “We want to help people understand that this is a crisis and that the caregivers — the hospitals, in particular — are really leading the charge in order to be able to both give care and solve the problem.”

Treating patients suffering from opioid use disorder and overdoses is impacting hospitals and health systems. An analysis released by Premier Inc. earlier this year showed that hospitals spent approximately $1.94 billion on patients who overdosed from opioids between 2017 and 2018.

“Opioid addiction has been a public health problem for some time, but we’ve yet to show exactly how hospitals – the entities that treat most of these patients – are financially impacted,” stated Roshni Ghosh, MD, MPH, Vice President and Chief Medical Information Officer at Premier. “This analysis shows that on top of losing family members and friends to this epidemic, it’s costing consumers and taxpayers, as well as hospitals.”

Hospitals and emergency caregivers need frontline solutions to effectively combat rising rates of opioid addiction, Ghosh stressed.