MN Department of Health Updates Drug Overdose Dashboard

In a press release, the Minnesota Department of Health has stated they have updated the data of Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS), substance use disorder treatment admissions, opioid prescriptions dispensed, and nonfatal overdoses through the year of 2019 on their dashboard.

NAS cases were down in 2018 compared to 2017, but the cases almost doubled from 2018 to 2019. There were 667 cases in 2019 compared to 360 in 2018. In the Northwest Emergency Medical Services (EMS) region, rates of NAS remained highest following the trend of previous years.

Admissions to substance use disorder cases are primarily led by admissions for alcohol treatment for adults in Minnesota. There was an increase of about 1,400 alcohol treatment cases from 21,802 in 2018 to 23,292 in 2019. In 2019 the second leading substance used at admission to treatment was methamphetamine.

Since 2015 the number of opioid prescriptions in Minnesota has been declining. The same can be said about the transition from 2018 to 2019 where there was decreases of approximately 8.5%, 2,804,918 to 2,566,497.

Emergency room visits for opioid-involved overdoses increased for all drug categories from 2018 to 2019. A majority of all nonfatal drug overdoses were treated in the ER versus being inpatient hospitalizations. More males had ER visits for opioid-involved overdoses than females, and the most common age range that visited the ER for overdoses were ages 15-34.