Opioid-Prescribing Patterns of Emergency Physicians and Risk of Long-Term Use.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Increasing overuse of opioids in the United States may be driven in part by physician prescribing. However, the extent to which individual physicians vary in opioid prescribing and the implications of that variation for long-term opioid use and adverse outcomes in patients are unknown.

Methods

We performed a retrospective analysis involving Medicare beneficiaries who had an index emergency department visit in the period from 2008 through 2011 and had not received prescriptions for opioids within 6 months before that visit. After identifying the emergency physicians within a hospital who cared for the patients, we categorized the physicians as being high-intensity or low-intensity opioid prescribers according to relative quartiles of prescribing rates within the sa

SUBMITTER: Barnett ML 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5428548 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature