So what do you expect we'll see here today?

I don't know. I called a colleague who's working right now and he said he was about to call

Nicole. So the person that he would be calling about is either a overdose or someone's seeking

treatment.

Dr. Gene Marie Perone runs a medical toxicology and addiction department in the University

of Pennsylvania's medical system. This means she is an ER doctor as well as a U-Pen professor

and researcher who knows a great deal about and who's seen a great deal of the opioid

crisis up close.

So we have about 1,000 or 1,200 patients who visited our three hospitals last year and

about 400 of them were overdoses. Probably 200 or 300 of them were seeking treatment and

then another 400 were seeking treatment for a complication, skin infections, fevers, abdominal

pain, nausea, vomiting, withdrawal symptoms.

Perone recently walked us through the ER at one of the U-Pen hospitals. She introduces to

the team working that day. Here is Dr. Kit Delgado.

Just right now I have a patient who came in who had stopped taking methadone because it

was interfering with his job and is now having opioid withdrawal symptoms. He actually came

in for a different complaint but...

I'm really...

...somewhat, you know, had some nausea and chest pain and got his normal emergency department

evaluation. It was just about to discharge them and sort of realize that this is the

root cause.

So the patient you mentioned is here now?

...