Introduced by Senators Joe Manchin and Shelley Moore Capito, Jessie’s Law was designed to prevent similar preventable deaths. It was eventually included in the 2018 omnibus spending bill and signed into law.
The law is named after , an avid runner and student from West Virginia who had been in recovery from heroin addiction for several years. In 2016, following hip surgery in Michigan, Jessie and her family explicitly informed hospital staff of her addiction history eight separate times to ensure she was not prescribed addictive narcotics.
: Information regarding addiction history is only shared if the patient provides explicit consent.
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: The law requires the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to establish best practices for prominently displaying a patient’s history of opioid use disorder in their medical records, similar to how a life-threatening drug allergy is flagged.