ArticleJournal of the American College of Emergency Physicians open2026
Estimating the Need for Naloxone Distribution from United States Emergency Departments.
Article in Journal of the American College of Emergency Physicians open, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Objectives: Naloxone is a key intervention for opioid overdose, and emergency departments (EDs) are an important setting for its distribution. Existing estimates rely only on overdose diagnoses, likely missing many patients with an increased risk of opioid overdose (referred to as "at-risk" visits or patients "at risk" throughout this paper), before that point. We sought to create an evidence-based, expanded definition and estimation of at-risk ED visits to better quantify opportunities and volume for naloxone distribution. Methods: We produced an expert-reviewed set of diagnosis codes that identified claims for patients with evidence-based risk factors for opioid overdose, beyond the opioid overdose codes currently in use. Using the 2021 Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) National Emergency Department Sample, we applied linearized survey analysis with stratified weights to quantify the frequency of claims with any matching primary or secondary diagnosis codes and provide a national estimate of qualifying visits. We cross-referenced this estimate with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) overdose surveillance data for validation. Results: We estimate that United States EDs saw at least 3.87 million visits by at-risk patients, compared with 226,000 for treatment of opioid overdose alone. Of these, approximately 3.64 million visits were not classified as overdose cases. Over 900,000 visits involved nonopioid drug use, and more than 40% of visits were covered by Medicaid. At-risk visits represented over 3% of all ED visits nationally. Conclusion: Our estimate represents a significant increase over previous approaches. We believe this expansion more accurately represents need, can contribute to expanded distribution of naloxone, and will better serve agencies quantifying naloxone in EDs.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.