Opioid crisis now burdens hospitals
ER treatment soars 99%, inpatient care rises 64%, feds say.
The coast-to-coast opioid
epidemic is swamping hospi- tals, with government data published Tuesday show- ing 1.27 million emergency room visits or inpatient stays for opioid-related issues in a single year.
The 2014 numbers, the latest available for every state
and the District of Columbia, reflect a 64 percent increase for inpatient care and a 99 percent jump for emergency room treatment compared to figures from 2005. Their trajectory likely will keep
climbing if the epidemic con- tinues unabated. The report, released by
the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, puts Maryland at the very top of the national list for inpatient care. The state, already struggling with overdoses from heroin and prescription opi- oids, has seen the spread of the synthetic opioid fentanyl, which can be mixed with heroin or cocaine and is extraordinarily powerful. Gov. Larry Hogan this year declared a state of emergency in response to the crisis.
Trailing Maryland for opi- oid-related hospitalizations is Massachusetts, followed by the District of Colum- bia. The AHRQ report does not speculate on why some states have such high rates of hospital admissions. It suggests that people in the
most urban places are more likely to be treated in a hos- pital than those in rural areas — which would indicate that lack of access to medical care is a factor in the uptick in death rates seen in less-urban parts of the country.
“Our data tell us what is going on. They tell us what the facts are. But they don’t give us the underlying reasons for what we’re seeing here,” said report co-author Anne Elixhauser, a senior research scientist at AHRQ.
The sharpest increase in hospitalization and emergency room treatment for opioids was among peo- ple ages 25 to 44, and that women are now as likely as men to be admitted to a hospital for inpatient treatment for opioid-related prob- lems. In 2005, there was a
significant gap between men and women, with men more likely to be admitted. That gap closed entirely by 2014.
The 10 states with the highest rate of opioid-related hospital admissions in 2014 were, in addition to Maryland and Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, West Virginia, Connecticut, Washington, Oregon, Illinois and Maine.
The 10 states with the lowest rate of inpatient stays that year were: Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, Texas, Kansas, Georgia, South Dakota, Arkansas, South Carolina and Hawaii.