FUNDS SOUGHT FOR ANALYZING OD REPORTS

AUSTIN -- The state's poison-control network is asking for $1 million for a
statewide computer system and a full-time epidemiologist to analyze reports
of illegal drug overdoses from Texas health care facilities.

Prompted by a spate of heroin-related deaths in North Texas in the late
1990s, legislation passed in 1999 requires hospitals and clinics to report
overdoses to one of the six regional poison centers. But lawmakers didn't
provide any money for record keeping.

With no reliable way to process the information -- track trends, offer
real-time numbers and follow up with hospitals to verify numbers -- its
usefulness is limited, public health officials said. "We're going to be
reporting regardless, but it's the difference between driving a new car and
driving a beat-up Camaro," said toxicologist Greene Shepherd, acting
director of the North Texas Poison Center in Dallas.

And if the numbers don't prove useful, it's difficult to get full
participation from hospitals -- rendering the statistics incomplete, said
Dennis Perrotta, an epidemiologist at the Texas Department of Health in
Austin and the agency's poison-control network liaison. The epidemiologist
would work at the Texas Department of Health, interpreting the numbers and
ferreting out the meaning behind the statistics, Perrotta said.

"We want somebody like this to enable us to analyze this information,
because collecting information and doing nothing with it is a waste of
time," he said.

The computer network, which would cost $950,000, would be valuable for
real-time reporting of statistics -- avoiding a months-long lag time, said
Bill Watson, managing director and clinical professor at the South Texas
Poison Center and one of the officials overseeing the law's implementation.

The statewide numbers for 2000 arrived in Watson's office in late January.
He'll use the statistics to gauge the law's effectiveness and develop a
baseline for tracking trends.

Even in the early stages, the statistics strengthen the overall picture of
drug use and abuse in Texas, researchers say.

Jane Maxwell of the Texas Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse said
information from hospitals and clinics in conjunction with her research
bolster the big picture.

"I find it a wonderful data source, and I'm using it more and more in my
work," Maxwell said. The goal is to start issuing regular reports on the
data within the next year, after poison-control officials tie up logistical
loose ends: who would get the data and what kind of number-crunching is
involved, Shepherd said.

Hospital participation is key.

A year ago, about 15 percent of Texas' hospitals and clinics reported
overdoses; now, that's increased to between 50 percent and 60 percent.

Hospitals that don't comply can be fined, but that usually isn't enforced
- -- similar to laws governing mandatory reporting of other illnesses to
state health authorities, Shepherd said.

Hospitals faced some of the earliest challenges in implementing the law.

They had to determine how to define an overdose and then how to efficiently
report it without taking valuable personnel time away from the emergency
room -- where most overdose cases come in, hospital officials said.

For each case, the report must include the date of the incident, the age
and gender of the patient, the drug, symptoms and treatment.

"We found that the requirement was going to be extremely tedious until we
came up with a mechanism of faxing the information to poison control," said
Grace Croft, director of emergency services at Harris Methodist HEB.