Arizona Poison and Drug Information Center Helps Save Millions

TUCSON, Ariz. – The poison and drug information center located at The University of Arizona saves $10 million dollars or more each year in health-care costs for Arizona patients, government health programs and insurance companies.  How?  By keeping patients out of costly emergency rooms when they don’t need to be there.

A regional study earlier this year determined the costs of emergency care to patients with conditions similar to those managed by the Arizona Poison and Drug Information Center, a public health hotline operated by the UA College of Pharmacy.  When surveyed, 70 percent of the patients with those conditions said they would seek care in the closest emergency room if the poison hotline was not available.

“When we calculate the average cost of emergency room treatment for these conditions, and multiply that by the number of people who would go to the ER if they couldn’t receive trustworthy advice from our hotline, we see that our service really does keep health-care costs down,” says Jude McNally, managing director of the center.  ”Based on these estimates, the total number of dollars saved by managing conditions successfully at home instead of going to an emergency room tops $10 million a year.  Calculated another way, that’s about $152 saved for every call we get.”

The Arizona Poison and Drug Information Center receives about 70,000 calls annually concerning medications, possible poisonings and encounters with venomous creatures.  It serves approximately 2.5 million Arizonans living in all counties of the state except Maricopa.  Physicians and other health professionals statewide also access the toxicology expertise at the center.

Another program in which the poison center is a partner, a UA clinical study of a scorpion antivenom, adds savings.  The research project not only has resulted in about $2 million in grant funding, most of it from out-of-state sources, but provides the investigational antivenom to the hospitals across the state that are in the geographic range of the bark scorpion.  The sting of this scorpion can cause serious nerve poisoning, and can be life-threatening, especially in small children.  The investigational antivenom is the only existing antidote; treatment without antivenom requires intensive care and heavy doses of sedative medicine to calm the nervous system.

Preliminary results of an economic report show that having the antivenom available in these hospitals saves “probably an additional million dollars a year” in health-care costs, says Leslie Boyer, MD, who heads the clinical study and is also medical director of the poison center.

“A big part of the savings comes from eliminating the need for expensive emergency helicopter transport to a hospital with a pediatric intensive care unit that can treat these youngsters with serious nerve poisoning,” she explains.

The Arizona Poison and Drug Information Center brings other external funding to the state as well. The Health Resources and Services Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has provided more than $1.2 million to the center for operations and projects over the last seven years.  This past year, the center received $307,000 from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to monitor toxic exposures.

Not all the callers to the poison center can avoid a trip to the ER or doctor’s office, of course.  It is difficult to quantify the health-care dollars saved by getting patients with serious poisonings to the appropriate medical facility promptly, and the poison center, which began more than 50 years ago as a volunteer effort by College of Pharmacy faculty to southern Arizona physicians, has always put its focus on service, not savings.

“Our goal with all calls is to direct people in need to the appropriate care, not to keep costs down,” McNally says.  ”Our mission is to help people who have had a potentially harmful exposure, a bad reaction to a medicine or other medical issue.  It’s a $10 million bonus that having a hotline that people can access at no charge to them also significantly reduces unnecessary costs to the health-care system.”

Submitted on behalf of Arizona Poison and Drug Information Center
The Arizona Poison and Drug Information Center is a Center of Excellence at The University of Arizona College of Pharmacy.  The center is certified by the American Association of Poison Control Centers and is one of 61 poison centers in the United States.  The 24/7 hotline is 1-800-222-1222.

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