More Evidence That Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs Might Increase Overdose Deaths

Jeffrey A. SingerAt a Cato Institutepolicy forum in October 2019, Columbia University public health researcher David Fink presented data showing that Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs), designed to surveil opioid prescribing by health care practitioners to their patients in pain, have no appreciable effect on the fatal or non ‐​fatal opioid overdose rate, but may have the unintended consequence of increasing overdoses from heroin. I havecited his work, along with the work of others, that draw similar conclusions.Now researchers at Indiana University are providing even more evidence that PDMPs, along with prescription limit laws and other interventions, “may have the unintended consequence of motivating those with opioid use disorders to access the illicit drug market, potentially increasing overdose mortality.”Their research, published inJAMA on February 12, 2021, was a cross ‐​sectional study that utilized overdose mortality data from the National Vital Statistics System, and claims data from 23 million commercially insured patients provided by the Optum Clinformatics Data Mart Database (a large de‐​identified database) for the years 2007 through 2018.In the discussion of their findings, the authors made note of what they called theopioid paradox:Recent trends in the US opioid epidemic present a paradox: opioid overdose mortality has continued to increase despite declines in opioid prescriptions since 2012. The opioid paradox ma...

Source: Cato-at-liberty - February 14, 2021 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey A. Singer Source Type: blogs