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Opioid trends across Washington state

Data from the Washington State Department of Health Center for Health Statistics Comprehensive Hospital Abstract Reporting System (CHARS) allow us to explore hospitalizations associated with overdoses. Data include Washington residents in Washington hopsitals. Those who who died before discharge are excluded. For more information on data, see details at the end of the page.

We show both age-adjusted rates with confidence intervals and the share that opioids comprise of all overdose hospitalizations. Press the "Hospitalization rates" button and the "Percent of hospitalizations" button to switch between the two views. The confidence interval bars give an idea of the likely range of the rates, or how precise the measurement is. Turn off the "All overdose hospitalizations" series by clicking its entry in the legend to better see the confidence intervals for the opioid categories. All drug hospitalizations include not only those related to opioids but all hospitalizations attributed to poisoning by any drug, legal or illicit.

Data source: Washington State Department of Health

Data notes

Overdose hospitalizations data are from the state Department of Health Center for Health Statistics Comprehensive Hospital Abstract Reporting System (CHARS). Data for 2019 are preliminary. Rates are age-adjusted to a constant population structure, expressed as hospitalizations per 100,000 residents. Out-of-state hospitalizations, discharges from federal hospitals, rehabilitation centers, and psychiatric hospitals, and those who who died before discharge are excluded. Limited to those hospitalizations classified as initial encounters and where encounter field is missing. Drugs contributing to the hospitalization are identified by ICD codes, with all opioids being divided into:

Many hospitalizations involve multiple drugs. Although accompanying documentation says that the state DOH excluded "cases involving heroin overdose from the non-heroin opioid cases", they did this same exclusion in death data for only a subset of years shown here. The opioid sub-categories (heroin and non-heroin opioids) may or may not be mutually exclusive in a given year. Finally, switching from ICD-9 to ICD-10 may have created a discontinuity from 2015 to 2016.