The Effect of Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs on Opioid Utilization in Medicare

Thomas Buchmueller () and Colleen Carey

No 23148, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The misuse of prescription opioids has become a serious epidemic in the US. In response, states have implemented Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs), which record a patient's opioid prescribing history. While few providers participated in early systems, states have recently begun to require providers to access the PDMP under certain circumstances. We find that "must access" PDMPs significantly reduce measures of misuse in Medicare Part D. In contrast, we find that PDMPs without such provisions have no effect. We find stronger effects when providers are required to access the PDMP under broad circumstances, not only when they are suspicious.

JEL-codes: I12 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
Note: EH
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Published as Thomas C. Buchmueller & Colleen Carey, 2018. "The Effect of Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs on Opioid Utilization in Medicare," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, vol 10(1), pages 77-112.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w23148.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Effect of Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs on Opioid Utilization in Medicare (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23148

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w23148

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().