Intended and unintended consequences: Changes in opioid prescribing practices for postsurgical, acute, and chronic pain indications following two policies in North Carolina, 2012-2018 - Controlled and single-series interrupted time series analyses.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The potential misapplication of current opioid prescribing policies remains understudied and may have substantial adverse implications for patient safety.

Methods

We used autoregressive integrated moving average models to assess level and trend changes in monthly 1) prescribing rates, 2) days' supply, and 3) daily morphine milligram equivalents (MME) of incident opioid prescriptions relative to 1) a state medical board initiative to reduce high-dose and -volume opioid prescribing and 2) legislation to limit initial opioid prescriptions for acute and postsurgical pain. We examined outcomes by pain indication overall and by cancer history, using prescribing patterns for benzodiazepines to control for temporal trends. We used large private health insurance claims dat

SUBMITTER: Maierhofer CN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9801483 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature