Opioid-Related Hospital Visits See Dramatic Increase Across Country: Report

Hospitalization involving opioids saw a dramatic increase nationally between 2005 and 2014, both with regards to inpatient stays and opioid-related emergency department visits, according to new data released Tuesday by the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project.

Opioid-related stays and emergency department visits are identified as all-listed diagnoses and included events associated with prescription opioids or illicit opioids like heroin.

The data presents information for the patient, sex and age groups with the highest opioid-related inpatient stay rates for 44 states and the District of Columbia for 2014. Patient sex and age groups with the highest opioid-related emergency department and visit rates are presented for 30 states that provided data in 2014.

Findings from the data show that between 2005 and 2014, opioid-related inpatient stays increased faster for females than males, but by 2014, the rate was virtually the same for both. In terms of emergency department visits, the increase in opioid-related visits was similar for males and females, and males consistently had a higher visit rate than females. For both sexes, the opioid-related emergency department visit rate increased faster than the inpatient stay rate.

Females in nearly three-fourths of the states had a higher rate of opioid-related inpatient states, while males had a higher rate of emergency department visits.

Opioid-related inpatient stays were highest among patients aged 25-44 and 45-64, while the highest rate of emergency department visits was in the age group of 25-44. For all age groups, except those aged 1-24 and 25-44, the rate of opioid-related inpatient stays was consistently higher than the rate of opioid-related emergency department visits. For all age groups, the rate of opioid-related emergency visits increased faster than the rate of opioid-related inpatient stays.

In all states in 2014, patients aged 25-44 had the highest opioid-related emergency department visits.

Massachusetts consistently ranked as having among the highest opioid-related inpatient stays across all patient sex and age groups. Meanwhile, Connecticut, Maryland and Washington ranked among the states that had the highest rates in all but one sex or age group. Some states had low inpatient stay rates for some age groups but high rates for other age groups. For example, in California inpatient stay rates for those in the age groups 1-24 and 25-44 was among the lowest but among the highest rates for patients aged 65 and older.

For opioid-related emergency department visits, Maryland consistently ranked as having among the highest rates across all patient sex and age groups. Massachusetts and Rhode Island ranked among the states with the highest rates in all but one sex or age group.

Connecticut and Massachusetts had among the highest rates of opioid-related emergency department for patients aged 1-24, 25-44 and 45-64 but among the states with the lowest rates for patients aged 65 and older.

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