In 2016, an average of 65 people per month were showing up in South Shore Hospital’s emergency department in the throes of an opioid overdose, many of them fatal, as Massachusetts struggled to beat back an epidemic that was claiming more and more lives each year. By the end of 2016, the year’s death toll would set a new record at 2,154.
“We had just some terrible weeks of multiple overdoses, multiple deaths,” Dr. Jason Tracy, head of the hospital’s emergency department, said. “That was very dramatic to our department.”
Three years later, the nationwide epidemic of opioid addiction continues to claim lives by the thousands, ravaging communities across the U.S. and costing states millions of dollars in medical costs and lost productivity.
But in Massachusetts, at least, there are signs that the crisis has peaked. The number of people dying from opioid overdoses in the state fell slightly in 2017 after five consecutive years of sharp increases.