Can General Practitioner Opioid Prescribing to Compensated Workers with Low Back Pain Be Detected Using Administrative Payments Data? An Exploratory Study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Approximately one third of Australians with accepted time loss workers' compensation claims for low back pain (LBP) are dispensed opioid analgesics. Structured administrative payments data is scalable but does not directly link opioids to prescribers. We sought to determine whether opioid prescribing by general practitioners (GPs) to workers with workers' compensation claims for LBP can be detected in structured administrative payments data.

Methods

We used a sample of workers with accepted time loss workers' compensation claims for low back pain from 2011 to 2015 from the Australian states of Victoria and South Australia. We structured administrative data to test the assumption that opioid dispenses that occurred immediately after a GP encounter in sequence and o

SUBMITTER: Vo J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11839698 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature