Poison Control Hotline to End Service Statewide
By Luke Johnson/Montana Kaimin
Dee Braxton, like so many parents, has been through the nightmare of seeing her son’s life flash before her eyes. But it was the smell the clued her
Braxton came into the kitchen to find that her 3-year-old son, Joshua, had drank about one fourth of a bottle of Pine-Sol that Dee had mistakenly left out. She detected the cleaner on his breath.
With Joshua in her arms, Dee, of Great Falls, found the number for the Montana Poison Control Hotline in the phone book and dialed.
“I don’t know which one of us was crying louder, Joshua or me,” Braxton said.
Dee’s call went through to the Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Center in Denver. They asked her Joshua’s age, weight, medical history and found out how much Pine-Sol that Joshua had ingested. Using the information provided, they told Dee to give Joshua a few glasses of milk and everything would be all right. They called her back an hour later to make sure he was fine.
The Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Center handles more than 10,000 calls from Montanans per year on average, but as of next year Montana’s calls won’t go through. Gov. Judy Martz has recommended that the Legislature cut the program’s funding entirely, in an effort to shore up money for the state’s budget, which faces a $250 million defecit. Cutting the program could lead to higher patient costs, less credible patient care and endanger lives.
According to Ken Leighton-Boster, a section supervisor in the Montana Department of Health and Human Services, the program ends up saving money in the long run for Montanans, because people will have no other choice but to go to the emergency room.
“In one year without this program in place I would estimate that the citizens of Montana will have paid enough on emergency room visits that didn’t have to happen to support the progùram for several years,” Leighton-Boster said. “This is not to mention the loss of life or loss of an individual’s ability to function that will no doubt occur. It’s just shameful.”
Montana contracts with the RMPDC to handle poison control calls from around the state. The service is free for Montanans, because of the contract which costs the state about $77,000 annually.
The number of 10,000 plus calls may seem high given Montana’s population of only around 900,000 people. However, RMPDC not only fields calls from households where people may have ingested poisons, it also provides services for health-care professionals who may not know how to handle individual patient’s cases.
“The poison control center has well-trained operators who work alongside clinical toxicologists, doctors that specialize in the poisoning of the body,” Leighton-Boster said.
“Doctors from Montana hospitals frequently rely on calling the center in order to save patient’s lives,” Leighton-Boster said. “They say 'I’ve got a case who has this and this in his or her system, what do you recommend?' It’s simply impossible for E.R. doctors to keep up on all of the different drugs or household items that people can ingest. The center provides a huge service to patients.”
Tom Sielski, a registered nurse who works in the E.R. of St. Patrick’s Hospital in Missoula, says that he regularly uses the poison control number.
“Any time that a patient comes in that has taken something that we’re not familiar with, we call the hotline,” Sielski said. “We general—ly see cases where someone has overdosed on a drug that we don’t know much about or cases where a child has eaten something he or she shouldn’t have and we call them up. It’s our best resource in those cases.”
Sielski said that without the ability to call poison control, patients could suffer.
“With no access to poison control, we would have to consider other sources like the Internet,” Sielski said.
Each call to the center, whether it be from a hospital or a household, triggers a series of calls from the center back to the household or hospital.
“A parent will call and say, ‘I think my child drank Draino,’” Leighton-Boster said. “The call taker will then get as much information about the situation as the™y can like the child’s age, size and weight. They then have the knowledge and the expertise to predict the outcome and either send the subject to the E.R. or give them specific information on the other end of what to do like diffuse the poison with milk or water.
“In every instance the call is followed up. The initial call is followed by a call back from the center one hour, four hours and 24 hours after the call.”
Most calls that the RMPDC receives from households involve kids 5 years old and younger, according to Mary Hilko, director of public relations for RMPDC.
“Parents feel awful about their kids getting into things, but it is usually not their fault,” Hilko said. “Kids are supposed to be learning about their environment at that age through tasting and rubbing. A lot of medicines look like candy to them.”
Many of the calls are able to divert emergency trips to the hospital, which saves money to both taxpayers and Ωthe patient’s family.
“The real benefit of the program, outside of getting the very best expertise, is that between 80 and 90 percent of the calls from households the experts can handle right there in the house,” Leighton-Boster said. “This is a huge savings when you consider that the average visit to the E.R. costs between $300 and $500.”
However, the governor’s Legislative budget proposal is far from set in stone, so the Poison Control Line could still be salvaged when the Legislature meets in Jan.
“The Poison Control number looks like one of the things that we’re going to fight to keep, unless someone can show us an alternative that works,” said Rep. Nancy Rice Fritz, D-Missoula.
If Montana does not renew its contract with RMPDC then the center will be forced to disconnect the number and turn away all calls from Montana, regardless of the severity of the situation.
This is going to put Montanans who have over dosed on a substance in real trouble even if a loved one has taken them to the hospital, Hilko said.
“Physicians won’t know what to do and we’ll have to decline them,” Hilko said.
Montanans who are far from an emergency room and those in urban areas will like Dee Braxton will have no other choice but to take their loved one to the E.R.
Dee says that if she hadn’t found the number for poison control, she would have taken Joshua to the E.R., which could have cost her hundreds of dollars.
“I’m so thankful to the people at poison control,” Braxton said.
