Opioid crisis in rural areas may be tackled through telemedicine

The Washington Post: GILES COUNTY, Va. — Robert Devereaux is a family physician in this southwest corner of Virginia, where problems surrounding prescription opioid use far outstrip the capacity of psychiatrists and addiction specialists to treat them. When he found crushed fragments of painkiller pills inside the nose of an older patient with chronic back pain, the most Devereaux could do was refuse to prescribe more.

“There are a lot of patients in denial. … It’s a lot of families that have suffered horribly from this,” he said, sitting in his one-story clinic in the small town of Pearisburg. “The mental health issues aren’t going to go away.”

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