This article details one city’s struggle to contain costs as it deals with its opioid crisis. It seems the same scenario is playing out in cities big and small across the nation. The costs of hospitalization and medical care associated with drug use, particularly overdoses, are skyrocketing. This pace is not sustainable!

Besides overdoses, drug use via intravenous or intramuscular (“muscling”) routes also results in hospitalizations due to infections and abscesses. Endocarditis – the infection of one of the valves of the heart – is a particularly complicated and gruesome complication of injection drug use. It requires prolonged hospitalizations with extensive workups, diagnostics, and IV antibiotic courses. It may also lead to surgeries for valve repair or replacement, and those are very costly.

Read more here: http://bit.ly/overdosecosts