A congressional committee has advanced legislation that would require the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to study how prevalent drug testing for marijuana, fentanyl and other drugs is in hospital emergency departments.
The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health last month approved the legislation from Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA), known as “Tyler’s Law,” after Tyler Shamash, a 19-year-old who died following a fentanyl ingestion in 2018 and was not tested for the drug when brought to the hospital for a suspected overdose.
While the legislation, H.R. 2004, is largely focused on fentanyl, it says that within a year of passage the HHS secretary would need to complete a study to determine “how frequently hospital emergency departments test for fentanyl (in addition to testing for other substances such as amphetamines, phencyclidine, cocaine, opiates, and marijuana) when a patient is experiencing an overdose.”
The study would also need to look at costs associated with fentanyl testing, the potential benefits and risks of such testing and how it may impact patients’ experiences—including with respect to confidentiality and privacy protections and the patient-physician relationship.
The bill, which has 60 House cosponsors, says that within six months of completing the study, HHS would
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