Fortune August 8, 2020
Knee replacement. Cancer surgeries. Organ transplants. Worldwide, tens of millions of elective surgeries have been postponed because of the coronavirus. Public health officials have had to balance patients’ urgent need for treatment against the very real danger of potentially immune-compromised individuals being exposed to the virus in a hospital setting, and the need to reserve hospital capacity for COVID-19 patients.
But the decision to postpone these so-called elective surgeries may have severe consequences—including deepening the opioid crisis. Based on what we already know about the connection between preoperative pain management and opioid dependency, the coronavirus pandemic is creating a perfect storm.
Before the virus hit, we had hardly even begun to grapple with the opioid crisis. And now,...
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