Statistics from the Ohio Department of Health show that the staggering rate at which people are dying from accidental drug overdoses isn’t slowing down — at least not this year. Or last.
That’s because the latest data, released in March, reflect findings from 2010.
According to public-health officials, the data lag — typically two years behind — isn’t unusual. Kentucky’s most-recent numbers on overdose deaths are from 2010, as well. West Virginia is reporting “preliminary” figures for the same year.
In fact, the lag is “necessary,” said Christy Beeghly, who runs the health department’s Violence and Injury Prevention Program, “so we can make sure our files are as accurate as they can possibly be.”
But the process for collecting, sorting and completing a year’s worth of Ohio’s unintentional overdose records is sluggish. Here’s how it works, according to data-analysis manager John Paulson:
County coroners typically are charged with investigating drug-overdose deaths. The coroner will file a death certificate and enter information about the cause of death into the state’s online Electronic Death Registration System. But often the coroner hasn’t yet determined the cause of death, said Paulson, so it’s given a “pending” status.
The coroner then has up to six months to resolve the case and file a supplemental death certificate.
The long timeline is part of the “methodical nature of death investigations,” which includes waiting for toxicology test results and autopsy reports, said David Corey, executive director of the Ohio State Coroners Association.
“They could take weeks to get done, because you want to be thorough. We’re interfacing with law-enforcement officials and the prosecuting attorney.… We need to coordinate all of that, and it does take some time.”
Throughout the year, all of Ohio’s death-certificate files are sent electronically to the National Center of Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease and Control Prevention in batches of 2,000 deaths at a time. At the CDC, the files are funneled through computer software that classifies each death with a standardized, alphanumeric “cause code.”
Two or three months later, the health department receives the codes, which Paulson and his staff use to build a database of Ohio’s mortality records. Other states also send data when Ohio residents die in those places.
Paulson said his office’s use of death certificates is a “crude way to track death trends,” because different coroners fill out the certificates with varying degrees of thoroughness. For example, some might not include the type of drug that caused the overdose.
Even with less-than-perfect data, Beeghly said they’ve managed to identify what health officials and lawmakers are calling an “epidemic” of drug abuse, driven by prescription painkillers. While more up-to-date data would be nice, she said she doesn’t think the health department’s slow statistics are keeping the state from addressing its pill problem.
“I’ve not considered the data lag to be a barrier in any way,” she said. “The only way I guess it becomes an issue is if you’re trying to measure the impact of our efforts. Then you have to wait a little longer.”
Deanna Pan is a fellow in the Ohio University E.W. Scripps School of Journalism Statehouse News Bureau.