A new report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) highlights selected home hospices’ disposal practices and the challenges they face.
When hospice patients die at home, they often leave behind commonly misused controlled substances, such as oxycodone for pain relief. A 2018 law allows employees of qualified hospice programs to collect and destroy these drugs.
The Substance Use-Disorder Prevention that Promotes Opioid Recovery and Treatment for Patients and Communities Act (SUPPORT Act), enacted in 2018, allows employees of qualified hospice programs to dispose of unused controlled substances by collecting and destroying the drugs in patients' homes. In addition, some states had laws allowing hospice employees to dispose of patients' unused controlled substances prior to 2018.
Three of the seven hospices GAO contacted operate in states without such laws. Officials from two of these hospices told them their hospices began disposing of patients' controlled substances in their homes following the enactment of the SUPPORT Act in 2018. However, one hospice had not begun disposing of these medications because the state department of health directed it not to do so until a state law granting disposal authority to hospices had been enacted. An official from that hospice said that it continued the practice of leaving the controlled substances in the home and educating family members about how to dispose of the drugs themselves.
Hospice officials they spoke to identified best practices for preventing diversion and disposing of controlled substances. Best practices include prescription drug counts performed by hospice employees to determine if controlled substances are being used properly, use of lock boxes to limit access to controlled substances in situations where diversion is suspected to be a risk, and having a witness for the disposal of unused controlled substances. The officials also identified challenges their hospice employees have faced when disposing of controlled substances in patients' homes. Challenges include the cost of certain disposal methods, a lack of a witness to the disposal process, and inconsistencies between state laws and federal law concerning which hospice employees may dispose of controlled substances.
Misuse of controlled substances continues to be a serious public health problem in the United States. Most commonly misused controlled substances include opioids (such as oxycodone), which are used to treat pain, and central nervous system depressants (such as diazepam), which are used to treat anxiety and sleep disorders. These types of drugs are commonly prescribed for patients in hospice care.
