Health care lawyer facilitates novel solutions to opioid crisis.

Byline: Pat Murphy

The opioid crisis has the health care industry on its heels.

"We have EMS services that are completely overtaxed and hospital emergency rooms that are completely clogged," says Joel K. Goloskie, a health care attorney who represents clients in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

Goloskie, of Pannone, Lopes, Devereaux & O'Gara in Boston, is helping hospitals and communities implement creative strategies to manage overburdened emergency services and spiraling costs that are the byproduct of the abuse of fentanyl and related drugs.

For example, Goloskie has helped one community navigate potential legal barriers to a program under which a health insurer provided to a local EMS a sports utility vehicle for transporting drug abuse victims to a doctor or health center of their choice instead of an ER. The transportation is made available to patients once responders determine that there's no critical medical situation involved.

In addition to relieving the burden on an overtaxed hospital, the cost savings in avoiding an unnecessary trip to the ER can be in the thousands of dollars, according to Goloskie.

"Patients frequently prefer to go to a health center because they have relationships with those providers, and the providers have a stake in their long-term well-being," he adds.

Goloskie says that state anti-kickback laws often pose an obstacle when health care entities, particularly providers, try to implement an innovative solution to a problem like the SUV donation program he worked on (Goloskie declines to identify the client or the community).

"No matter how well-intentioned, you can never give money that may generate a referral your way," he says.

Goloskie was able to get around the anti-kickback issue for the SUV program by having a health insurer participate. He explains that anti-kickback laws don't preclude an insurer from providing a community with a van or SUV that can transport opioid abuse victims in non-life threating situations to their provider of choice.

"The insurer is not getting any referrals, so there's not an anti-kickback issue there," he says.

Everyone has a financial stake in the spiraling costs caused by opioid abuse, as emergency and medical services are typically paid for by private health insurance or by the taxpayer...