Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital officials are still seeing a troubling number of fentanyl overdoses, but experts believe the messaging on the dangerousness of the drug is beginning to have an impact.
The data indicates that generally, overdoses of all kinds remain a significant community concern, based on the hospital’s patient volumes.
As one of the on-call doctors for the last 20 years in the emergency room of the Santa Clarita Valley’s only community hospital, Dr. Oliver Sahagun has pretty much seen it all.
“We see both medical and surgical illness. We see kids, we see adults, we see pregnant people, we see traumas,” said the board-certified emergency room physician, “and so any overdose that comes in is our primary responsibility.”
The overall numbers reflect a slight increase this year in overdoses for 2024, but Sahagun noted that overdose figures reflect a variety of different causes.
The situations can range from an accidental ingestion of something that produces a toxic reaction to the body to someone deliberately taking something with the intention of self-harm, he said.
And fentanyl remains the predominant concern for local health officials, in terms of overdoses.
Acknowledging the recent Los Angeles County Public Health Report on fentanyl overdoses, Sahagun said based on his observations, the hospital’s numbers somewhat mirrored the county’s: The numbers appear to be “plateauing,” but fentanyl is still responsible for the majority of opioid overdoses seen.
Henry Mayo officials did not have specific data for the toxicology behind each overdose, but the county data indicated that about 60% of its fatal overdoses involved fentanyl. Sahagun said that sounded about right for the local emergency room, too.
The numbers have somewhat declined from their peak a few years ago, he added.
He credited the local decline to a variety of factors, including outreach events like the annual parent symposium, which Sahagun spoke at last year.
Hospital figures
The latest data from the hospital indicates that the hospital has had 318 overdose patients so far in 2024 through July, an average of about 12 per week, due to a myriad of causes.
There were 261 total overdoses in the first six months of 2024.
That figure is a reversal of a several-year trend for total overdoses, based on the hospital’s figures, but still a significant decline from the recent high.
In 2019 and 2020, Henry Mayo recorded 422 and 423 overdoses, respectively; by the next year, fentanyl began to really show up in the numbers, according to Sahagun, with the community seeing a nearly 35% increase in total overdoses to 569 overdoses in 2021.
The following year, there were 503 overdoses at Henry Mayo, including more than 30 of them resulting in fatalities.
In response, fentanyl became the focal point of law enforcement, which formed a task force within the Sheriff’s Department to specifically address opioid overdoses. It also became a focus of city outreach, which was highlighted by the citywide parent symposium.
In 2023, the overdose numbers declined again to 472 for the year.
In 2024, the figures seem to start trending up in April. There were an average of 40 overdoses per month for the first three months: and then 50 in April; 48 in May; 41 in June; and 57 in July, which is the highest single-month total the hospital has had in the last 20 months.
Law enforcement response
Countywide, the figures for all of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s reporting districts are down 25% this year through July 20, compared to the same time as 2023, according to Lt. Bobby Dean, who currently leads the Opioid Overdose Response Task Force.
“It was promising to see total overdose deaths within the county were down 4%,” he said.
While there has been a plateau, there’s still a way to go from the astronomical rise the county saw in such incidents.
“Fentanyl is still the leading cause of overdose deaths within the county, but only saw a 3% increase from 2022 compared to a 1,652% increase over the previous six years,” Dean said.
He said previously that one of his team’s focuses has been to bring federal charges that can result in lengthy prison sentences in fentanyl-related cases to try and discourage its illegal use.
The deadliness and ease of access to the drug are big factors in the rise of its prevalence, according to experts.
Outreach messaging
This year, the city of Santa Clarita said that based on community input, the city is changing its efforts “to educate our residents about the dangers of drug use, especially the deadly consequences of fentanyl,” according to an email from Carrie Lujan, director of communications for the city.
She said the new effort would work through a variety of formats, including campus meetings, social media outreach for parents and a podcast, which is part of a program the city is calling “Parenting for Prevention,” Lujan said.
Cary Quashen, founder of the SCV’s largest drug-rehabilitation program, Action Drug Rehab, cautioned against a false sense of security from any kind of “plateau” in the figures.
He said he doesn’t think there’s been a single person in his treatment program this year who hasn’t had an experience with Narcan, the drug designed to reverse fentanyl overdoses by blocking opioid receptors in the body.
He also said that it’s normal for a new drug to receive a lot of attention that can wane after media coverage dies down.
But with fentanyl, both Quashen and Sahagun mentioned there’s a particularly deadly component: Many who ingest the drug don’t even realize it’s been put into whatever they’ve taken until it’s too late.
It’s a popular additive for illicit drug manufacturers primarily for two reasons, they said: How addictive it is, and how cheaply it can be made.
“The message needs to be all drugs are poison,” Quashen said. “All drugs are deadly.”
