Opioid-related emergency calls rise in Hub, decrease in state

The number of medical calls for opioid issues jumped 18 percent last year in Boston — even as the statewide call volume dropped.

“People are coming here for treatment, and sometimes coming here to use — and sometimes die here in Boston,” said Marty Martinez, the city’s chief of health and human services.

Emergency Medical Services responded to 2,646 calls for opioid issues in Boston in 2017. In 2016, that number was 2,237, according to a quarterly report released this month by the state Department of Public Health.

Martinez said the first few months of this year also appear to be bucking the statewide trend of slowly decreasing deaths and emergency calls.

“They’re seeing just much more need,” Martinez said of the first responders dealing with overdoses.

Statewide, 2,016 died of confirmed or suspected overdoses in 2017. That’s 133 fewer than in 2016. The number of EMS calls during that time also dropped across the commonwealth, from 22,417 to 22,107.

“This is the glimmer of hope that we’ve all been waiting for,” Dr. Scott Weiner, the director of opioid response and education at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said of the state as a whole.

Overdose deaths began to skyrocket around 2012, causing officials to label the problem an opioid crisis. Last year was the first since then that the overall number of deaths dropped, according to the state, and the first three months of 2018 appear to be on track to come in lower than the first three of 2017.

Martinez said the city will continue to work on getting as many drug-treatment beds as possible available. He said another major piece of the puzzle will be to better connect people coming to Boston for treatment to appropriate help.

About 265,000 patients received prescriptions for federally controlled opioids in the first three months of 2018, compared to more than 390,000 in the first quarter of 2015. Weiner credited that to the state’s tracking system, which doctors are mandated to check before prescribing opioids. If they see potentially problematic behavior such as various prescriptions or many cash payments, the doctors might think twice before writing a script for opioids.

“The patients with concerning patterns have gone down precipitously,” Weiner said.