Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs and Opioid Overdoses: Exploring Sources of Heterogeneity.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:Prescription drug monitoring program are designed to reduce harms from prescription opioids; however, little is known about what populations benefit the most from these programs. We investigated how the relation between implementation of online prescription drug monitoring programs and rates of hospitalizations related to prescription opioids and heroin overdose changed over time, and varied across county levels of poverty and unemployment, and levels of medical access to opioids. METHODS:Ecologic county-level, spatiotemporal study, including 990 counties within 16 states, in 2001-2014. We modeled overdose counts using Bayesian hierarchical Poisson models. We defined medical access to opioids as the county-level rate of hospital discharges for noncancer pain conditions. RESULTS:

SUBMITTER: Castillo-Carniglia A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6437666 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature