The risk of taking counterfeit prescription pills

Dr. Reb Close and Dr. Casey Grover are Emergency department doctors at Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula, and the leaders of Prescribe Safe, a partnership between Montage Health, Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula, and 30 other local organizations to reduce opioid abuse and misuse. Since launching the program back in 2014, Prescribe Safe has contributed to:

• Well over 50 percent reduction in opioid prescriptions in outpatient clinics
• More than 300 percent increase in the use of opioid alternatives in Community Hospital’s Emergency department
• Drastic decrease in opioid overdose death rate in Monterey County, which went from an above-average rate in 2012 to the third-lowest rate of California’s 53 counties in 2017

Committed to working with the community to reduce overdoses, improve access to addiction treatment, and increase drug abuse prevention, Dr. Reb Close and Dr. Casey Grover participated in a virtual town hall discussion with Monterey Peninsula Unified School District on what to look for and how to respond to drug abuse. They also created a short video to educate students about the dangers of counterfeit prescription pills containing fentanyl.

Click to view in Spanish.