Opioid Prescriptions for New Low Back Pain: Trends and Variability by State.

This study used a national claims database's billing codes to identify patients in the outpatient setting with a new encounter for isolated low back pain following a 1-year look-back period. The primary outcome was whether an opioid prescription was filled within 30 days after the encounter. Patients with a daily morphine milligram equivalence (MME/day) known to be associated with a higher risk of overdose were also analyzed. RESULTS: A total of 418,565 patients between January 1, 2011 and November 30, 2016 were included. The proportion of patients with filled opioid prescriptions declined significantly between 2011 and 2016 (P < .01; 28.5% in 2011, 27.6% in 2012, 26.3% in 2013, 25.5% in 2014, 23.5% in 2015, and 20.4% in 2016). Nationally, the proportion of patients with a filled opioid prescription varied significantly between states (P < .01), ranging from 12.9% in Hawaii to 33.6% in Arkansas. DISCUSSION: We found that the overall frequency of opioid prescriptions for low back pain is decreasing nationally, which speaks favorably for future initiatives to change physician prescribing patterns. However, we identified that there is large variation in prescribing patterns among physicians in different states. PMID: 31907255 [PubMed - in process]
Source: American Family Physician - Category: Primary Care Authors: Tags: J Am Board Fam Med Source Type: research