UIHC doctor: ER visits have dropped with 21 law

Alcohol-related emergency-room visits at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics by young adults age 18 to 22 decreased 25 percent when comparing a four-month period of 2009 to the same time frame this year.

Dr. Michael Takacs, clinical assistant professor of emergency medicine and ER doctor, compiled the data and conducts research on alcohol-related emergencies in patients of college age. He believes the decline is the result of Iowa City's 21-only ordinance, which went into effect June 1.

“I believe that it's made a huge impact as far as access to alcohol,” Takacs said.

But an opponent of the 21-only ordinance says he believes a lot of student drinking has shifted to house parties, where they may be less likely to call 911 unless someone is very sick. That's opposed to downtown, where bar employees will seek help and police officers are around, argues Matt Pfaltzgraf, a UI student and campaign manager for Yes to Entertaining Student Safely, a group trying to get the 21-only law repealed.

Pfaltzgraf said he would have guessed emergency-room visits for young people would have decreased even more than they did.

“At house parties, people do not call ambulances,” he said. “They throw them on couches or they put them in bedrooms and they wait for them to sober up. They're not proactive about somebody's safety. They're more concerned about getting in trouble with an alcohol ticket.”

In looking at the patient charts, it was noted occasionally that the patient was brought in via ambulance from a house party, Takacs said.

“I can say that happens, though I don't know how often it happens,” he said.

Voters go to the polls Tuesday to keep or repeal the ordinance, which prevents people younger than 21 from being in non-exempt establishments with liquor licenses (mostly bars) after 10 p.m.

According to the data compiled by Takacs, who along with two research assistants went through 2,000 patient charts, alcohol-related ER visits by people age 18 to 22 totaled 116 from June through September in 2009. That number dropped to 87 in June through September this year, a 25 percent decline.

Among only 18 to 20 year olds, the alcohol-related ER visits totaled 65 in those four months last year, a number that dropped to 48 this year, a 26 percent decline.

He looked at ER visits every day from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. His study was approved by the Institutional Research Board. Takacs received a $15,000 grant from the UI provost's office to conduct research about young people and alcohol.

Of emergency-room patients age 18 to 22, about 10 to 15 percent of them are brought in for alcohol-related reasons, he said. His next step in the research is to determine how many of the patients he studied are UI students, Takacs said.