Beaver County sees decline in drug deaths from 2016

At first glance, the numbers for Beaver County look bad:

On Wednesday, an independent state agency’s research brief reported that Beaver County had the second-highest rate of heroin overdose hospitalizations in the state for 2016-2017, behind only Philadelphia.

Indeed, the county had seen a near threefold increase in drug deaths in 2016, from 37 deaths in 2015 to 102 a year later, many of them attributed to the emergence of fentanyl in the local drug trade.

“We knew we were really moving in a direction that we did not want to be moving in,” Kate Lowery, administrator for Beaver County’s drug and alcohol unit, said Tuesday. The community knew it, too, she added, as stories about drug-related deaths appeared in the paper “almost every other day.”

But now a turnaround appears to be emerging.

Beaver County Coroner David Gabauer noted this week that the number of drug deaths dropped to 87 in 2017 and the county had 21 overdose deaths through June 30 this year.

At this pace, Beaver County could reduce its drug overdose deaths by more than half in just two years.

It’s an improvement as noteworthy as 2016’s death toll was alarming.

Ms. Lowery described what transpired the past two years as “a creative partnership” between her program, the Heritage Valley Health System, the local police chief and the presiding magistrate.

The effort started by making naloxone more widely known and available, an emergency stopgap to pull those who had overdosed back from possible death.

Now when the person arrives in the emergency room, said Heritage Valley chief medical officer Michael Cratty, the staff there immediately brings in a drug rehabilitation expert and crafts an individualized treatment plan or connects the individual with outpatient services.

“We have seen a steady decline in the number of opioid overdoses presenting to the emergency room,” Dr. Cratty said.

“It is clear there is still more work to do, but the engagement of all those involved is truly making a difference.”

As part of Ms. Lowery’s program, the drug user can participate in a 150-day program involving treatment, therapy, regular drug screens and mentoring others.

She said about 20 people have completed the program so far and only one dropped out.

The drug problem has not gone away, she cautioned, “but it does appear we’re getting better outcomes at the local level,” she said.

The research brief released Wednesday by the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council gives a demographic breakdown of who is being hospitalized for drug overdoses.

Among its findings was a one-year 35.8 percent increase in heroin overdose hospitalizations for people age 55 or older.

While the 55-and-older demographic still has a lower heroin overdose hospitalization rate than other age groups, the rate has more than tripled since 2013.

Statewide, the 15- to 34year-old age group had the highest heroin hospitalization rate at 28.8 per 100,000 residents in 2017, up from 26.6 percent from the prior year.

The report showed that Beaver County’s heroin overdose hospitalization rate was 44.5 per 100,000 residents for 2016-17.

Rates for other southwestern Pennsylvania counties over the two-year period were: Cambria, 41; Washington, 37.9; Allegheny, 37.8; Westmoreland, 31.7; Mercer, 30.8; Lawrence, 30.2; Butler, 30.1; Fayette, 27.1; Indiana, 26.3; and Armstrong, 21.7.

Greene and Somerset county rates were not reported because of their low volume of hospitalizations.