SPOKANE, Wash. — The Spokane Fire Department says over the last few months, it’s responding to fewer overdose calls. The health district says it’s seeing a similar trend across the county.
Spokane Fire says it’s responding to just over 110 calls for overdoses per month since the beginning of September. That’s about 40 less on average than any other month this year.
The Spokane Regional Health District says it’s seeing a similar trend across the county. The county is averaging 237 EMS responses to suspected overdoses per month so far this year. But during September and October, the county averaged less than 170 per month.
“We saw a similar trend in our ED visit data. We also saw a decrease in ED visits for opioid overdoses in September and October. So that’s helpful to see that in two different data sets. The ED visit was below the average of what we saw for the past 12 months,” said Danielle Wrenn, Data Center Program Manager for the Spokane Regional Health District.
The Regional Health District says naloxone is also being given to people before EMS arrives at the highest rate since it started tracking that in 2019.
The Regional Health District will continue to update its opioid dashboard every month to track if this trend will continue.
Fire Chief Tom Williams says this could be a sign that regional efforts to reduce overdoses are working.
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