HEALTH

Deaths from heroin, painkiller abuse surge in Arizona

Jason Pohl
The Republic | azcentral.com
Opioid-overdose deaths continue to rise in Arizona.

Heroin and prescription opioids drove the number of fatal overdoses in Arizona up 20 percent last year compared with 2016, troubling figures that coincide with the state's highly publicized effort to confront what officials continue to say is a full-blown "crisis."

A total of 949 people in Arizona died of an opioid-caused overdose in 2017, the Arizona Department of Health Services said in a report released this month. That's 20.1 percent higher than 2016's finalized tally of 800 deaths and more than twice as many deaths as 2012's total of 454. 

Heroin accounted for 51 percent of the surge Arizona has witnessed in the past five years, health officials said. Heroin killed 344 people in 2017 — up from 311 in 2016 — and accounted for 36 percent of opioid-overdose deaths.

Prescription and synthetic opioids accounted for 605 deaths last year, up from 489 in 2017, according to the report. 

RELATED: In rare bipartisan act, Arizona lawmakers confront opioid epidemic

If the trends continue, officials warned, more than 1,000 people will fatally overdose on opioids this year. 

"Arizona is faced with an opioid crisis. The numbers are staggering," Dr. Cara Christ, director of ADHS, said Monday morning at a news conference alongside Gov. Doug Ducey and members of the Arizona Department of Public Safety. 

She noted "significant measurable progress" in terms of patient referrals to behavior health or substance abuse treatment after an overdose, which increased from 45 percent in 2017 to 73 percent in 2018. Plus, she said, the number of opioid prescriptions filled at pharmacies in Arizona dropped 40 percent in a year, and the number of opioid pills dispensed dropped 43 percent.

While the numbers were troubling, the results from legislation including the Arizona Opioid Epidemic Act will continue to be realized in months and years to come, officials said.

At the news conference, Christ and Ducey lauded law enforcement's embrace of naloxone programs and celebrated a DPS detective who used Narcan last week to help reverse an overdose while working in Cochise County. 

"We've said that there is a real challenge here," Ducey said Monday, acknowledging the "ongoing crisis." 

DHS plans to soon launch a chronic pain program, and the state will begin licensing pain management clinics in 2019. The state also plans to monitor its real-time "surveillance data" that relies on healthcare providers and first responders to report suspected overdoses. 

While the state has been tracking suspected opioid overdoses since last summer, those figures might not be as reliable as the report released this month because of variations in how data is collected, officials have said previously. Still, that information can track ebbs, flows and areas to prioritize more timely action.

The state's official opioid report was released this month and is based on medical examiner investigations and death certificates. The total for 2017 could creep even higher as investigative reports continue to come in.

A state review detailed in the report found that just 36 percent of people who died from opioids had a prior opioid-related encounter at a hospital or emergency medical provider in the five years before their death. Of those people, 46 percent had some kind of hospital or emergency medical encounter unrelated to opioids. 

For the second year in a row, there were more than 51,000 "opioid-related encounters" at Arizona hospitals — a metric that quantifies the economic cost of opioids in the healthcare system.

That puts the estimated cost for opioid-related encounters in hospitals in excess of $431 million, the most in recent history. 

Reach the reporter at 602-444-8515, jpohl@azcentral.com or on Twitter: @pohl_jason. 

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