State budget cuts threaten to disconnect poison hotlines

Physicians and public health officials say poison control centers are a vital and cost-efficient part of the health system.

By Kathleen Phalen Tomaselli, AMNews correspondent. Dec. 15, 2003.

Without a last-minute infusion of state funding, callers to any one of California's four regional poison control divisions would not have received life-saving advice. Instead, they would have heard a simple message: "If this is an emergency, call 911."

The California Poison Control System, the statewide provider, got a one-year, $6.9 million reprieve with an 11th-hour allocation in a late summer budget bill signed by former Gov. Gray Davis. "We were in danger of losing all funding," said Iana Simeonov, director of program development. "We would have closed."

But like many centers across the nation, the CPCS future -- even with this assistance -- is still uncertain as state and federal budget cuts threaten its existence. And closing poison centers is a costly mistake, say doctors and public health officials.

"These are not the cuts we want to take," said Georges Benjamin, MD, executive director of the American Public Health Assn. in Washington, D.C. "[We fear] morbidity and mortality will increase from poisonings, and emergency department visits will clearly go up."

Poison control centers began about 50 years ago because accidental ingestion of drugs and toxic substances ranked among the top causes of childhood emergencies. Today, the nation's 62 centers (and one in Puerto Rico) handle more than 2.3 million calls each year regarding human exposures, creating a health safety net that most parents and doctors rely on for immediate, accurate help.

"It's a resource all of us have used," said Denise Sur, MD, a family physician in Santa Monica, Calif. "I've used it when admitting patients with overdoses; when seeing patients in the ER; as a doc taking a phone call from a parent; and as a parent. It's an incredible resource that meets a tremendous need."