Your next trip to the doctor’s office could be a little different.
High injury and accident rates involving alcohol are causing health leaders to take action.
Dr. Kevin Sherin is the director of the Orange County Health Department.
“We lead the United States in pedestrian and bicycle fatalities in this community, and so some of those are alcohol related,” Sherin said.
In 2012, fatal crashes involving alcohol went up by 4 percent and crashes with injuries went up almost 7 percent compared to the year prior in Orange County.
That’s part of the reason why the county's health department is calling on doctors to better screen people for alcohol abuse.
Sherin said alcohol screening and some counseling can reduce drinking by 25 percent in people who drink too much, but only one in six people has ever talked to their doctor about alcohol use.
"We’d like to give the physicians a specific script of how they can ask the questions about alcohol use, so they are able to identify people who might have a problem drinking,” he said.
It’s not just problems on the roads.
Health leaders said binge drinking causes about 80,000 deaths in the United States each year.
They said it can lead to heart disease, breast cancer, sexuality transmitted diseases and violence.
Sherin said they want to help more people identify if they have a problem and give doctors the tools to ask the right questions.
"People tend to hide what they don’t want people to know," Sherin said. "So there is always what the patient knows and doesn’t tell the doctor and that is what we are trying to hone in on.”