Prince George has the second highest opioid hospitalization rate in Canada

A new study has found that Prince George has the second highest rate of opioid-related hospitalizations in Canada.

The findings come from a new report from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), which looks at opioid-related harms in the country.

“What we found with this analysis, which was surprising to us, was that smaller communities compared to larger communities have a higher rate of opioid poisoning hospitalization,” says Roger Cheng, project lead for the CIHI Opioid Reporting Team.

Prince George had 43 opioid-related hospitalizations in 2017. The rate for that year (the most recent year data was collected from) was 57.7 per 100,000 people.

“We found that Prince George is among the communities with the highest opioid poisoning hospitalization rate; in fact, it is the second highest rate overall in Canada,” Cheng tells PrinceGeorgeMatters.

Prince George falls in between Nanaimo, which also has a rate of 57.7 but a higher number of hospitalizations, and Kelowna which has a rate of 54.7.

Cheng says the hospitalization rates provide an idea of how extensive the issue is in different communities.

“We know that Canada is under an opioid crisis, so by looking at the hospitalization numbers for opioid poisoning and for other types of harm, by looking at the trends, hopefully, we would be able to provide a good picture of where we are at with this crisis.”

The study found that communities with populations between 50,000 and 99,999 are hardest hit, experiencing the highest per capita hospitalization rates in the country.

The data also includes an expanded definition of opioid harm.

Cheng says for the first time, CIHI has included opioid poisonings, opioid use disorders, adverse drug reactions and neonatal withdrawal symptoms in its report.

“We have an expanded definition of harm and we have a more detailed local level analysis; as well, by looking at a wider definition of harm and digging deeper into the local level analysis, we hope to provide more breadth and depth and provide a more complete picture of opioid harm in Canada,” he says.

The report also found that opioid-related hospitalizations have increased 27 per cent over the last five years.

For Prince George specifically, the absolute rate difference between 2016 and 2017 was a jump of 25.1, which was a higher rate than Nanaimo’s 10.9 and Kelowna’s 18.5.

“Opioid-related harms or opioid hospitalizations is not only a big city problem. It affects big city communities as well as smaller communities."

You can read the full study here.