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At a recruiting event in a sunlit parish hall here, job seekers from sober houses streamed in, looking for opportunities from a range of employers all willing to look beyond gaps in resumes, criminal records and messy pasts. Making the rounds at the “recovery-friendly job fair” was Ben Gale, who said it was tough getting work when he had to explain his history with drugs. “A lot of places look at you very differently,” said the 25-year-old, now sober from a heroin addiction. “A lot of them don’t want to give you a chance.” (Levitz, 11/27)

When President Trump declared the opioid epidemic a public health emergency, it came with a regulatory change intended to make it easier for people to get care. Doctors are now allowed to prescribe addiction medicine virtually, without ever seeing the patient in person. In Indiana, this kind of virtual visit has been legal since early 2017. So I called about a dozen addiction specialists in Indiana to find out how it was going. But no one had heard of doctors using telemedicine for opioid addiction treatment until I ran across Dr. Jay Joshi. (Forman, 11/24)

As a lifelong racket-sports fanatic, I've dealt with shoulder pain for decades, treating it with bags of frozen peas, physical therapy, cortisone shots and even experimental treatments like platelet-rich plasma. Eventually, however, the soreness prevented me from handling daily-living tasks like pulling a bottle of olive oil off the top shelf of my kitchen or reaching to the back seat of my car to grab my purse. Even low-impact activities such as swimming freestyle hurt a lot. Sleeping also got tougher. After MRI showed two full-thickness rotator-cuff tears, I finally called a surgeon. (Kafka, 11/25)

In April this year, Katie Herzog checked into a Boston teaching hospital for what turned out to be a nine-hour-long back surgery. The 68-year-old consulting firm president left the hospital with a prescription for Dilaudid, an opioid used to treat severe pain, and instructions to take two pills every four hours as needed. Herzog took close to the full dose for about two weeks. Then, worried about addiction, she began asking questions. "I said, 'How do I taper off this? I don't want to stay on this drug forever, you know? What do I do?' " Herzog says, recalling conversations with her various providers. She never got a clear answer. (Bebinger, 11/26)

A federal initiative to combat the opioid epidemic is being tested in Maryland. The Baltimore Sun reports Maryland, where overdose deaths are surging, is one of seven states approved to allow large residential centers to bill Medicaid for substance abuse treatment. Under the new structure, treatment centers receive reimbursement for each patient rather than a set grant. (11/22)

According to the annual Medical Examiners Commission Drug Report, deaths in which opioids were either present in the system or identified to be the cause of death saw a 35 percent increase from 2015, up to a total of 5,725 statewide. Cocaine-related deaths shot up from 1,834 to 2,882 during the same time, a 57 percent increase. (Varn, 11/27)

The state's prescription drug monitoring program is showing promising results in reducing opioid prescriptions written in South Carolina, according to a new University of South Carolina report. ... In response to the epidemic, state health leaders set up a prescription monitoring program and made it mandatory for all doctors to check before prescribing opioids. The database is run through the Department of Health and Environmental Control. USC's work focused on the Medicaid population, but lead researcher Ana Lopez-De Fede said the trends extend beyond those patients. (Wildeman, 11/26)

A doctor accused of drug trafficking, a registered nurse twice convicted of prostitution, and a certified nursing assistant who punched a sick senior citizen in the genitals have been suspended, according to November’s Florida Department of Health discipline report. (Neal, 11/26)