The Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council says hospitalization rates for opioid overdoses continue to decline across the commonwealth, and while there is no direct statistical evidence that it’s because of the availability of naloxone, it’s a reasonable conclusion. However, PH4C Executive Director Joe Martin warns that hospitalization for overdoses of cocaine and amphetamines are on the rise.
PH4C says that from 2016 to 2018, opioid overdose hospitalizations dropped 24 percent, to 2,667.
The numbers aren’t as good in Indiana County: there were fourteen hospitalizations in 2016, twenty in 2017, and sixteen in 2018. That’s an increase from 19.3 per 100,000 per county residents in 2016 to 22.2 in 2018. One factor that the report does not consider is that as a regional hospital, the Indiana Regional Medical Center routinely treats patients from neighboring Westmoreland, Cambria, and Armstrong counties.
Armstrong’s rate went down over the three years, while Clearfield’s numbers were about the same in the same period. Cambria and Westmoreland counties saw big decreases. For Cambria County, opiopid overdose hospitalizations fell from 58 in both 2016 and 2017 to 24 in 2018. Westmoreland County’s numbers fell from 116 in 2016 to 109 in 2017, and then to 68 last year. Jefferson County did not report data to PH4C.
The report does not contain the data on hospitalizations for overdoses of drugs other than opioids.
