Dallas Fire-Rescue administered roughly five doses a day of Narcan last year to try to save patients overdosing on opioids. But other than recording the data on drug overdoses, the city did little else with the information.
City and county authorities say that will soon change, because Dallas plans to join the Overdose Detection Mapping Application Program, or ODMAP, a nationwide database that can alert officials about sudden spikes and where they occur.
The mapping is part of a new effort by local government, health, first-responder agencies and other groups to work together to improve addressing the opioid crisis in Dallas by studying the information they already collect to better educate the public, help prevent overdoses and improve enforcement.
“Everybody was kind of doing their own thing, and we weren’t doing anything after treatment. We were just handing them off,” said Dallas Fire-Rescue Section Chief Scott Clumpner referring to patients after crews drove them to hospitals. “What’s going on now is everybody’s starting to come together to make sure that we are not duplicating efforts and, as much as possible, sharing information.”
The fire department tracks overdoses and medical aid given, such as Narcan, a nasal spray that can reverse the effects of an opioid overdose, through patient care reports. The reports include patients’ names, ages and locations of where they are helped. But Clumpner said concerns of patient privacy laws dissuaded the agency from sharing the data even with other city departments.
This was happening as crews were encountering more apparent overdoses. Clumpner said the department gave 942 doses of Narcan to patients in 2020, 1,231 doses in 2021 and 1,925 doses in 2022. Dallas Fire-Rescue responded to more than 286,000 emergency calls in 2022, including 208,000 by paramedics, according to city records.
The fact that the fire department didn’t share detailed information about the overdoses concerned Paula Blackmon, one of two Dallas City Council members leading a coalition of representatives from the city’s fire and police departments, homeless solutions and community care offices, Dallas County Health and Human Services, the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office, Dallas Independent School District, and other groups now working together to address overdoses.
The issue hits close to home for Blackmon. She said she’s had at least one family friend die from an accidental fentanyl overdose and one of her sons knows several people who’ve died or come close to death from drug overdoses. She said he repeatedly urged her for months last year to do more to prevent cases, particularly in instances where people unknowingly take prescription drugs laced with fentanyl.
“We knew DFR had this data, they wanted to share it but couldn’t because of HIPAA [privacy law] concerns and it makes you go, ‘Wait, we can share similar information for COVID to help the public and information about STDs, but we can’t share this?’” Blackmon said. “As an elected official, it’s frustrating. As a parent, it pissed me off.”
She said Dallas County, which oversees the city’s public health response, had to formally request the data from the city in December. They began getting it on Tuesday.
“We’re hoping this will allow us to have a more broader look at the problem,” said Dr. Philip Huang, director of Dallas County Health and Human Services. “It’s going to take all of us to get at this effectively.”
Plano Police Chief Ed Drain said he advocated for his department to enroll in the mapping program after he was appointed in 2020. He said he believed Dallas, as the largest city in the area, joining and sharing its data would have benefits beyond its city limits.
“The reason we’re part of ODMAP is we want to be able to see what’s going on around us regionally and we want to put our data in so other people can see it as well,” Drain said. “I think that’s an important step for us as a nation, as a state, as a region and as a city to be able to get our hands around this drug overdose problem.
“Of course, that only works if other agencies around you are also putting in data.”
The coalition of agencies met in December and again on Tuesday, according to Blackmon and Dallas City Council member Adam Bazaldua, the other coalition leader. They said the group also plans to use the overdose data to help develop local strategies as well as public service announcements and education campaigns, and ways to pay for them.
They said they would also like to see Narcan carried by all Dallas police officers and in every city recreation center and library, along with training for staff on how to use it.
“I think it’s a prudent and important tool to have,” said Bazaldua, who said he and Blackmon began seriously discussing leading a coordinated effort to address overdoses after attending a National League of Cities conference session on the topic in November. “It just makes sense to do what we can on every front because it seems to be hitting everywhere all at once.”
He said the city’s approach was to treat it as more of a public safety issue rather than public health.
Blackmon said she ultimately doesn’t lay any blame on the city’s fire department. “There was no avenue in which to talk about it,” she said.
“Maybe we need to start telling our first responders that if you’re seeing trends, it’s OK to sound the alarm,” Blackmon said. “I think we can give them that space to do it and not hide under HIPAA [privacy laws] or not wanting to be sued.
“We as a city need to be better at allowing that communication to flow.”
Clumpner said Dallas Fire-Rescue is doing more to address longer-term help to overdose patients after taking them to a hospital.
The city launched an opioid response team on Jan. 23, which sends a paramedic and a peer services specialist to follow up in-person with patients at least two days after they survive a drug overdose. The grant-funded program is part of a three-year partnership with Fort Worth-based behavioral health nonprofit Recovery Resource Council.
The two-person team can offer treatment referrals and other support to the patient and their family members, including giving Narcan and instructions on how to use it, Clumpner said. The program is aiming to contact at least 225 people a year.
“The goal is to get people the help they need,” he said. “We feel if we can catch that person who has an opioid addiction, get them into recovery or help them and their loved ones with education and resources, we may see these numbers start trending down.”
The Dallas City Council approved the deal on Dec. 14, and the city estimates being reimbursed more than $564,000 for costs related to the program.
Blackmon said the program has contacted 12 people as of Wednesday and four of them agreed to get treatment. She said those numbers were encouraging.
