Trending News Today: Improving Outcomes for Drug Overdose Survivors

States are showing increasing support for recovery coaches to help patients that have experienced a drug overdose. Recovery coaches are typically introduced to patients in the emergency department, and then keep in contact after discharge to help them stay sober and get jobs, housing, apply for food stamps, and other issues that may arise. States want to train and integrate these workers into the healthcare system to eventually prevent hospitalization costs, according to Kaiser Health News.

A hospital in Los Angeles has agreed to pay $450,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by the city. The lawsuit alleges that the hospital’s staff dropped off a homeless woman in a bad neighborhood without identification, and only wearing a paper hospital gown. The case’s attorney has requested that the company planning to buy the hospital implement a policy for discharging homeless, mentally ill patients, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Medical aid-in-dying has been legalized in 5 states, but the terminally ill patients who can seek this aid are not overwhelmingly concerned about the pain they experience, which was a driving factor for legalization. These patients are concerned about controlling the way they die more than preventing pain, according to Kaiser Health News. In the first states to legalize the aid, Oregon and Washington, patients were motivated by loss of autonomy, and being troublesome to their loved ones, the report noted.