CASSOPOLIS — With some new tools at their disposal from the state, the staff of the Cassopolis Family Clinic Network are working harder than ever to help stem the explosion of opioid abuse in Cass County.

CFCN Medical Director Genevieve Lankowicz updated more than a dozen members of the local health care, law enforcement and drug prevention communities with an update on how the clinic is adapting to recent Michigan law changes regarding prescription painkiller abuse, during a meeting of the C.A.S.S. Coalition at the Cass District Library in Cassopolis Thursday. The director showed off the new features of the statewide drug tracking system, which are intended to give medical professionals a more comprehensive look at the health and drug history of patients seeking opioid medicine.

The discussion followed a presentation by Lankowicz at last month’s meeting of the C.A.S.S. Coalition — a taskforce devoted to addressing issues related to alcohol, tobacco and other drug issues in the area — where she shared some of the ways the Federally Qualified Health Center has sought to reduce the abuse of opiate-based drugs, which has become a nationwide epidemic in recent years. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 40 percent of all opioid overdose deaths involve prescription drugs.

State officials revamped the Michigan Automated Prescription System, a system used by law enforcement and medical professionals to track drug prescriptions of patients, in April 2017. Following that process, Lt. Gov. Brian Calley signed a series of anti-opioid legislation into law last month that, among other provisions, made further additions to the MAPS database.

These improvements included assigning each patient a Narx Score, based on the amount of narcotic, sedative and stimulant drugs they have been recently prescribed. The new MAPS system also allows doctors to see an overall overdose risk score for patients, which physicians may use during consultations.

“[At] 200, it is already considered a risk,” Lankowicz said. “At the 900 level, you are 300 times more likely to overdose than a patient who is scored at 200.”

Another new feature of the MAPS system is that physicians can now get a visual timeline of when a patient was prescribed a particular kind of drug, which helps doctors see when patients are taking multiple drugs at once.

The enhancements to the MAPS system are on top of the other methods the CFCN has employed in recent years to reduce opioid abuse and diversion of painkillers.

Lankowicz said the clinic staff follow three principles when determining whether or not to prescribe a patient with opioid medication:

1. Do not start a patient on opioid medications without trying other painkillers first

2. Make sure to give the smallest dosage possible

3. Warn patients of the dangers of opioid medication beforehand

With an increasing amount of data showing that the side effects and risks associated with painkillers far outweigh the potential benefits, Lankowicz said she and others at the clinic have worked to get many of their patients taking a heavy amount of prescription medication to reduce their dependency on drugs.

“Most of the patients — but for a handful — if they listened to that, they came down off the tree limb and let us work with them to taper them down,” Lankowicz said. “But it was over months. Others didn’t want to hear it, and changed providers.”

These efforts appear to be paying off. Lankowicz said the number of patients receiving controlled substances through the CFCN has fallen by 50 percent, while the number of prescriptions has dropped by 62 percent. At the moment, only 20 of the clinic’s patients are using a mixture of prescription drugs that is not recommended.

“I feel the patients are having better health,” Lankowicz said. “They are safer, and the whole community is safer.”