Study: Opioid Overdoses Led to $2.3B in Spending on Emergency Room Visits in 1 Year

Opioid overdoses led to nearly 136,000 emergency room visits in 2010 and cost about $2.3 billion, according to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study, conducted by researchers from Stanford University, the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia and other institutions, called for more efforts to prevent overdoses and pointed out that the number they collected doesn’t reflect the totality of the problem. “This number represents only a portion of all opioid overdoses because many individuals never present to an (emergency department) or die with...