Data includes encounters for patients with opioid use disorder who received care in an emergency department (ED) within a participating Minnesota health system. Participating health systems (as of July 2026) include Allina, CentraCare, Essentia, HealthPartners, Hennepin Healthcare, M Health Fairview, North Memorial, and Sanford. Health systems serving southeast Minnesota, as well as Indian Health Services and Department of Veterans Affairs are not included. Buprenorphine received outside of the emergency department, such as in an ambulance or outpatient setting, is also not included. Data is de-identified, de-duplicated, and aggregated to ensure data privacy.
MOUD Prescriptions in the Emergency Department
Dashboard Guide
Who Is Included In The Dashboard?
What Is Described In The Dashboard?
Buprenorphine is a prescription medication used to treat opioid use disorder (OUD) and is one type of medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD). The dashboard describes the number of encounters in which patients with an opioid use disorder diagnosis are prescribed buprenorphine to treat opioid use disorder in an emergency department setting.
Data begins in 2020 and is updated semi-annually, with the latest data available from 2026. The visualizations on the dashboard present the most complete data available for each visual.
- The data reflect orders and cannot tell whether a prescription was filled or taken. Therefore, these data likely overestimate buprenorphine consumption.
- If an individual receives multiple prescriptions within a calendar day or a single ED encounter, only one is captured. This data is not a complete count of all prescriptions, but rather a count of encounters with a prescription.
- When visualized, data is rounded to the nearest 5 for privacy.
- Data is limited to participating healthcare systems.
- A refill code may be generic to the encounter and not necessarily pertain to the buprenorphine, but could be from any prescription at the encounter.
- The number of prescriptions does not describe the number of patients treated, just encounters with a buprenorphine prescription order. Prescriptions may represent the same person getting multiple prescriptions over time.
In the interest of privacy, rounding to the nearest 5 is applied to encounter and prescription counts wherever they are displayed, and counts are not displayed if there were fewer than 15 prescriptions or encounters.
We estimate proportions before rounding and censoring counts. Proportion estimates are suppressed when the numerator has fewer than 15 prescribing events to reduce the risk of unstable estimates based on small event counts.
Data Definitions
Buprenorphine prescriptions are a count of encounters in the ED in which there was an OUD-related diagnosis and an order placed for a buprenorphine prescription. We allow up to one prescription within a calendar day per individual. Buprenorphine is defined to include only the types of buprenorphine used as MOUD. Methadone is not included.
A count of how many emergency department visits with an OUD-related diagnosis occurred. OUD diagnosis ICD-10 codes are included in the dashboard’s Appendix.
A subset of OUD diagnoses indicate a non-fatal overdose (NFOD) diagnosis. The dashboard offers a view of prescriptions limited to the encounters with this NFOD diagnosis. NFOD diagnoses are included in the OUD rates, though the dashboard presents estimates among NFOD encounters as an additional view.
This slicer allows the trend to be viewed within the Twin Cities metro or outside the Twin Cities metro only. We classified visits by the location of the medical facility where the encounter occurred, not the patient’s residential address.
The proportion of ED encounters with a buprenorphine prescription are presented as percentages in this report.
No suppression is applied in the calculation of the percentage estimate. Estimates are calculated directly from aggregate counts.
Data is pooled into three-year estimates, and the counts of encounters and prescriptions represent a 3-year average during the time period. Pooling over time creates more stable estimates given the small number of events occurring in non-metro counties. Counts are displayed as rounded estimates to the nearest five and are not displayed if there were fewer than 15. The proportion estimates are suppressed when the numerator has fewer than 15 prescribing events to reduce the risk of unstable estimates based on small event counts.
County is assigned based on the patient's residential address, not the medical facility address.
The region slicer enables region-level estimates to be generated (i.e., metro and non-metro, or geographic regions).
A subset of OUD diagnoses includes an ICD-10 code indicating a prescription refill associated with the visit. Users may want to omit refills when attempting to estimate new prescriptions.