Title
Authorizing the Committee on Public Health and Human Services to hold hearings to assess the City of Philadelphia's efforts, as coordinated by the Managing Director's office and our Human services departments, to prevent and treat abuse, addiction, and disease related to the use of opioids.
Body
WHEREAS, In 2017, the City of Philadelphia estimated that 469,000 residents used a prescription opioid, 150,000 needed substance use disorder treatment, and 1,200 died from drug overdose, a substantial increase from the 907 reported deaths in 2016; and
WHEREAS, In Fiscal Year 2017, the City of Philadelphia appropriated $2.631 billion to address neighbors' quality of life through the Community Based Health (CBH), the Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual Disability Services (DBHIDS), the Department of Human Services (DHS), the Department of Public Health (DPH), the Mayor's Office of Community Empowerment and Opportunity; and
WHEREAS, The City of Philadelphia needs adequate oversight for contracts and services provided through these appropriations; for example, CBH recently discontinued several contracts under the $1.302 billion Health Choices Behavioral Health Fund due to medical fraud, yet CBH still lacks a public process for evaluating the quality of providers entrusted with the care of hundreds of thousands of patients; and
WHEREAS, The City of Philadelphia needs to join Governor Wolf in his declaration "Opioid Crisis" and declare our own "local" public health crisis by creating a comprehensive reform plan that examines our current systems, funding, and barriers to services for people in need of services; and
WHEREAS, The City of Philadelphia and the Department of Public Health needs to articulate a comprehensive strategy for public safety, drug treatment, and homelessness in Kensington, the epicenter of illegal drug trafficking, where massive open-air markets trap residents in their homes, and where proven harm reduction organizations...
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