Meaghann Interview
- High-Level Findings
- Meaghann is concerned that Dove might be a physical reminder of a flaw in users (being an addict)
- Meaghann is excited about any new tech that could potentially help the opioid epidemic
- Background
Meaghann is a PA, but not a Physician’s Assistant. In the Houston system, PAs are something else. Before being a PA she was an ER nurse in NYC, and then moved to Houston where she continued. As an ER nurse she became burned out by dealing with opioid users since most of them were drug seeking. Now she’s seen a complete flip since working in addiction medicine. Her current population wants help, see the value in her, and she sees success stories. Her clients backgrounds are all over the map, a lot of them were previously prescribed opioids and had normal lives like engineers with successful jobs, who through addiction lose their jobs and end up homeless “living under a bridge”.
- How Meaghann integrates into the HEROES workflow
Meaghann works with Jessica and Kelly and is the main prescription provider for HEROES. A client calls HEROES. They might be referred from drug court or a friend. After the initial intake, clients are sent to Meaghann who performs a medical evaluation, and potentially prescribes denote:20240226T092654][Buprenorphine (BUP). She starts with a Zoom call for the medical evaluation, goes over drug history, IV use, HIV status, and might prescribe a week of BUP over the call. She also tries to understand their sentiments towards denote:20240223T143546][medication assisted treatment. She never pushes the use of BUP, and over the course of her time with patients, fine tunes the dosing, refers out for dental care, connects clients to medicaid assistance, and tries to change their mentality away from feeling as if they have a character flaw towards understanding that this is a chronic disease with underlying trauma as a potential root cause. Some clients see this as a problem they have, when their parent gave them opioids as a child for a headache, or starting using as a way to cope with being molested by a parent.
- Meaghann’s major concerns Meaghann sees the black population as being particularly effected by the epidemic and more resources need to go towards those communities.
No matter who comes to her office, her goal is to get them feeling like real humans and to show compassion and is concerned that a device, like Dove, would be a reminder of their personality flaws which might hinder progress. Similar to diabetics aversion to the equipment they need to have on a daily basis.
Her main concern is that patients /ghost/ her and she has no idea what happens to them despite HEROES’s policy of 30/60/90 day check-ins. Folks get sober for a few days and don’t realize they have diminished tolerance and end up over-dosing from what was previously a normal dose.
- Meaghann’s numbers (and not wanting to know)
Meaghann doesn’t know how many people she sees overdose. She assumes that this information would make her job a lot harder. Currently she sees 13-15 patients regularly and sees 5 new patients per week (siting 35-50 visits per month), who eventually get referred to another provider to balance the load on providers. She loves KPIs but wouldn’t want overdoses to be a tracked metric. Most people in her regular rotation use denote:20240226T092654][Buprenorphine (BUP) for one to two years, but there is no FDA requirement to phase them off in any given time period. The risk of death from quitting is too high and the side-effects of potential kidney issues and gum recession aren’t enough to cause a change in policy.
- Places Meaghann goes for information
In her spare time, Meaghann attends zoom “lunch and learns” from Yale University and Texas Mood, another learning opportunity.
- Follow-Up
- diana at HEROES is a counseller and would be good to talk to because she’s been through all this before as an addict, peer coach plus, just got social work degree.
- Meaghann is eager for any chance to try new technology and would like to be kept abreast of our progress.
- ConEd (e.g. Texas Mood, and Yale University lunch-time zoom calls) should be considered a potential outreach channel for helping practitioners gain an awareness of the sense and alert innovation space.