The Supervised Consumption Site has been operating next to the Rotary House since March

By Shaun Penner

Supervised Consumption Sites

SCS facilities have 100% success rate in reversing overdoses: report

Aug 27, 2019 | 6:13 PM

A report produced by the Alberta Community Council on HIV says that Supervised Consumption Sites both save lives, and money.

The report took data from seven sites across the province, including here in the Swan City, and focussed on a number of areas like overdose reversals, site visits and referrals to services among others, which provided a bright picture for the overall effectiveness of SCS facilities.

The biggest stat that jumps out of the report is that all SCS sites across the province report having a 100% success rate in saving people from overdose, meaning zero people have died of a fatal drug poisoning since the first site opened in Alberta in November of 2017.

It also says just over 4,300 poisonings have been reversed in the province through SCS services, with 40 of those happening in Grande Prairie between the opening in March and the end of May.

A chart showing the number of overdose reversals at each SCS facility (Courtesy: Alberta Community Council on HIV)

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An increase is facility usage is also noted in the report, with over 303,000 visits province wide between January of 2018 and March of 2019. Only the first month of Grande Prairie’s operations were counted, in which it saw 298 visitors in its first month of operations.

Lethbridge continues to see the highest usage rate in the province, with over 60,000 visits in the first quarter of 2019 alone.

A chart displaying the rise in SCS facility visits in Alberta, especially in Lethbridge (Courtesy: Alberta Community Council on HIV)

The report also infers that there are huge cost savings to having SCS facilities in the community.

“Studies of existing SCS locations in Canada estimate the annual cost savings at between $200,000 and $6 million dollars per site,” says the report. “Which considers direct and indirect costs such as prevented overdoses, prevented HIV and Hepatitis C cases, health care costs, lost productivity, and loss of life. Cost-benefit analysis has come to similar conclusions on the SCS, with the most conservative estimate being that at least $5 dollars is saved for every $1 spent on SCS.”

Further to the cost savings, it also claims that over 3,700 calls to EMS province-wide have been averted because staff from supervised sites have responded to overdose events with healthcare staff of their own.

This chart shows the number of EMS calls that were avoided because of SCS facilities (Courtesy: Alberta Community Council on HIV)

The report comes out at a time of great uncertainty for Supervised Consumption Sites, as Associate Minister for Mental Health and Addictions Jason Luan recently unveiled a panel to review the effectiveness of these sites. That came after the UCP government announced in June that they were pausing funding for additional proposed supervised consumption sites in Medicine Hat, Calgary and Red Deer.

Luan says the panel will be reviewing all evidence both for and against consumption sites. This report will undoubtedly fall within that review.

The full report can be reviewed here.