Last year in Philadelphia, 1,217 people died from a fatal drug overdose/drug poisoning death. The city is on track to see the same unbelievable number of deaths this year.

While nothing can replace those who are no longer with us, these deaths can tell us an important story about if and where our City's safety net services failed. There are valuable lessons to be learned if City officials have the courage to look - lessons that can help prevent more unnecessary deaths.

To that end, this petition is to demand a transparent and comprehensive audit of the 1,217 people who died from a fatal drug overdose/drug poisoning death last year.

This audit must be advised by community stakeholders and look at existing system data for each individual who died from a fatal drug overdose/drug poisoning death in 2017 to explore if, when, where, and how they touched any of the City's safety net services prior to their deaths. Questions that must be explored and publicly reported out on include but are not limited to:

- How many of these now dead human beings attempted to access treatment services via contact to CBH or BHSI in the year prior to their death? What was the outcome?

- How many were engaged in treatment services within the year prior to their death? Where was treatment received; what type(s) of treatment was received; for how long was treatment received; what post-treatment follow-up services were provided, etc.?

- How many presented at a Crisis Response Center (CRC) seeking treatment within the year prior to their death? What was the outcome of that presentation? Did all CRC presentation decisions happen with CBH/BHSI consult? Were services made immediately available in alignment with the provider assessment's Level of Care (LoC) recommendations? Are there discrepancies between provider assessment LoC recommendations and CBH/BHSI service authorizations? Are there discrepancies among authorizations made by CBH that are dependent upon which physician or clinical care manager was involved in authorizing services?

- How many were touched by Homeless Outreach Services? What resources were provided at point of contact?

- How many were offered pharmacotherapy immediately when presenting for treatment?

This is by no means an exhaustive list but a starting point for the types of data City officials must be looking at if truly invested in preventing unnecessary deaths. For many involved in the work on the ground, we know that a good number of people attempt to seek help prior to their death. Now it is time City officials to have the courage to look at the state of the system by listening to those whom the system failed most of all...

We demand an audit of the list of 1,217 dead human beings to understand where our systems failed and how to make sure it doesn't continue to happen.

City Officials must conduct audit of 1,217 OD/Drug Poisioning Deaths in Philly last year!

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