A new online dashboard using real-time electronic health data looks to monitor the impacts of opioid and substance use in Hennepin County.
The SUD dashboard, or substance use disorder dashboard, was launched by Hennepin County and the Minnesota Electronic Health Record Consortium.
Julie Bauch, Hennepin County's Opioid Response Coordinator, says the dashboard is a product of the COVID-19 pandemic where hospitals pooled their data to show what was happening in the community.
"Knowing that the opioid crisis had been growing and is still growing, we knew that having all of the hospital data together was a really good way to indicate how people in our community were using the hospital system for substance use disorder and more specifically for opioids. Since that's really the epidemic we're in right now."
The near real-time date shows how people are accessing Hennepin County emergency departments, staying in-patient for substance use disorder, and helps officials identify emerging trends related to opioid and substance use.
“The dashboard shows the near real-time impact of the substance use crisis in Hennepin County hospitals,” said Dr. Tyler Winkelman, General Internal Medicine Division Director at Hennepin Healthcare who leads the project for the MN EHR Consortium. “It can be used to identify emerging trends like the rise in opioid overdoses or to confirm that methamphetamine use is of concern.”
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Data displayed through the SUD can also be a driving factor for funding substance use initiatives in Hennepin County.
"There are national opioid settlement dollars coming to states, counties, and cities," Bauch said. "That includes Hennepin County and some of the cities within Hennepin County. We want to make available and transparent with every piece of data that we have so that people know how to allocate resources and where their priorities might lie."
According to the dashboard, there were 48,441 hospital visits related to any substance including alcohol in 2022. Of those visits, 10,368 were for opioids while 6,766 visits were for psychostimulants.
That data is through May 31, 2023.
Data suggest that July has historically brought the highest level of substance related healthcare use in Hennepin County.
"We are following national trends, which means we are finding that opioid use, overdose, and death is on the rise," added Bauch. "We saw that incline happening before COVID, but what happened to coincide with COVID was the introduction of fentanyl. We saw an increase in opioid deaths because of fentanyl during the COVID times and that increase has not stopped or slowed down."
According to the Minnesota Department of Health, there was a 43 percent increase in opioid overdose deaths from 2020 to 2021 with 978 reported deaths, more than double the reported 427 deaths in 2019.
That 2021 data, according to MDH, showed American Indian Minnesotans were ten times as likely to die from a drug overdose than white Minnesotans.
Black Minnesotans were more than three times as likely to die from drug overdose than white Minnesotans.
Bauch adds those disparities are highlighted by the SUD.
"Those disparities among residents that exist in Hennepin County. We know the American Indian and African American population are disproportionately impacted by the opioid epidemic. That includes in overdoses and overdose deaths. Now we're seeing that show up in utilization of hospital systems. That's a clear indicator of how we prioritize the allocation of our resources into which communities. It's really disheartening to see, but it gives us a very clear eyed vision of where to put our funding."