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Court Briefs

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Their view: History will smile on Colin Kaepernick. Wanna bet?

<p>The opioid abuse crisis has become so widespread that one in 37 hospitalizations in Pennsylvania were opioid-related in 2017, according to a new report. The good news, such as it is: Luzerne County is bucking the trend both statewide and regionally.</p><p>The Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council issued a new research brief Tuesday that broadened the usual look of opioid hospitalizations to go beyond the most commonly cited statistic of admissions for overdoses. The new report looks at hospitalizations for overdoses, for &#8220;opioid disorders&#8221; such as withdrawal or other symptoms, and for cases where the patient was admitted for another condition but also had opioid use disorder as a co-occurring condition.</p><p>Statewide, those three categories accounted for 36,712 hospitalizations in 2017. Of those, 9.5 percent were opioid overdoses, 7.5 percent were opioid use disorder as primary reason for admission, and 83 percent were opioid disorder as a co-occurring condition.</p><p>As it usually does, the council calculated the rate of admissions per 100,000 residents age 15 and older to compare county numbers to the state rate and to each other. While Luzerne County had 522 opioid-related admissions in 2017, it had a substantially lower rate than the state and most neighboring counties.</p><p>The state rate was 345.9 opioid-related hospitalizations per 100,000 residents. In Luzerne County, it was 195.9. Of seven adjacent counties, only Wyoming was lower at 161. (Sullivan County, with fewer than 6,500 residents according to the U.S. Census, was one of two counties where numbers were not reported due to low volume.)</p><p>The highest regional rate was posted by Carbon County, with 716 hospitalizations per 100,000 residents. In fact, that was the highest rate among Pennsylvania&#8217;s 67 counties. Other rates for the region, from highest to lowest: Monroe County &#8212; 390.2, Schuylkill County &#8212; 359.8, Lackawanna County &#8212; 258.2, and Columbia County 204.3.</p><p>The lowest rate in the state was in Union County to Luzerne County&#8217;s west, where the rate was 76.1 admissions per 100,000 residents. Union, where Lewisburg is the county seat, has an estimated 44,494 residents, according to the U.S. Census.</p><p>A few other statewide findings:</p><p>&#8226; Those age 35 to 54 made up the largest percentage of opioid-related hospitalizations, at 37.4 percent. Those age 15-34 comprised 34.6 percent, and those 55 or older were 28 percent.</p><p>&#8226; By ethnicity, blacks had the highest rate at 419.9 hospitalizations per 100,000. The rate for whites was 349.1 and the rate for Hispanics was 263.</p><p>&#8226; The lower the household income, the higher the rate of opioid-related admissions. For those with income below $30,000, the rate was 788.6 per 100,000 residents. For $30,000 to $60,000 it was 389.7, for $60,000 to $90,000 it was 245.9, and for 90,000 and more it was 150.5</p><p>&#8226; The number of opioid-related hospitalizations soared by 103.6 percent from 2008 to 2015, climbing from 14,711 to 29,958. Comparing data after that year is likely inaccurate because new coding requirements implemented Oct. 1, 2015, improved the identification of such admissions. That change pushed the number of cases to 36,522 in 2016, but the rate remained relatively level with 36,712 opioid-related hospitalizations in 2017.</p><style>
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<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Mark Guydish</p><p>mguydish@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Mark Guydish at 570-991-6112 or on Twitter @TLMarkGuydish</p></shirttailMeta></div>

ODs dominate drug-abuse talk, but new report shows problem runs much deeper