San Francisco EMS Weekly Opioid Overdose 911 Responses

San Francisco Emergency Medical Services Agency data tracks weekly counts of opioid overdose-related 911 calls responded to by ambulances. The dataset is derived from electronic patient care reports filtered using The Rhode Island Criteria, which includes calls where an opioid overdose was documented or naloxone was administered. Data is updated weekly with a roughly 24-hour lag from the state database.

Use Cases

• Monitor weekly trends in opioid overdose incidents requiring EMS intervention based on the weekly aggregated counts.
• Assess the impact of public health interventions on overdose response volumes based on the time-series nature of the data.
• Compare overdose response data with related datasets (e.g., overdose deaths, calls for service) for a more complete public safety picture, as suggested in the description.

Strengths

• Data is sourced from official electronic patient care reports submitted to the California Emergency Medical Services Agency.
• Case definition uses a standardized external criterion (The Rhode Island Criteria) for identifying opioid overdose-related calls.
• Weekly update frequency provides relatively timely surveillance data.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and granularity beyond weekly totals are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data excludes calls resulting in patient death on scene, which may undercount severe overdose events.

Provenance

Source

San Francisco Emergency Medical Services Agency, via the City of San Francisco's data portal.

Collection Method

Aggregated from electronic patient care reports submitted by the San Francisco Fire Department and other ambulance companies to a state database, filtered using The Rhode Island Criteria.

Time Range

Weekly data, starting Sunday and ending Saturday. Specific date range is not provided.

Freshness

Updated weekly with a 24-hour lag; last metadata update was 2026-03-22.

Geography

San Francisco County, California, United States.