Inappropriate prescribing of opioids for patients undergoing surgery

Nathan H. Varady, Christopher M. Worsham, Antonia F. Chen, Eric L. Smith, Jaemin Woo and Anupam B. Jena ()
Additional contact information
Nathan H. Varady: a Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Hospital for Special Surgery , New York , NY 10021
Christopher M. Worsham: d Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital , Boston , MA 02114
Antonia F. Chen: e Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Brigham and Women’s Hospital , Boston , MA 02115
Eric L. Smith: f Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, New England Baptist Hospital , Boston , MA 02120
Jaemin Woo: g Department of Economics, Brown University , Providence , RI 02906
Anupam B. Jena: h National Bureau of Economic Research , Cambridge , MA 02138

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2022, vol. 119, issue 49, e2210226119

Abstract:

In response to the opioid epidemic in the United States, states have passed policies aimed at regulating how opioids are prescribed by physicians. For such policies to be effective, however, opioids must be prescribed to the patients for whom they are intended. Whether opioid prescriptions are written for those who are not intended to consume them is empirically difficult to show. In a commercially insured population, we examined opioid prescriptions written for and filled by spouses of patients undergoing outpatient surgery on the day of a patient’s surgery compared with the surrounding days. Because patients may be unable to fill prescriptions themselves immediately after surgery, surgeons may prescribe opioids to a patient’s spouse, which would be clinically inappropriate. Among 450,125 opioid-naïve couples studied, for patients who did not fill perioperative opioid prescriptions themselves, the rate of spousal fills on the day of surgery (DOS) was 2.39 fills per 1,000 surgeries compared with 0.44 fills on all other perioperative days (adjusted odds ratio (aOR), 5.5, 95% CI, 4.6–6.5). Increases in spousal opioid fills were not present for patients that filled opioid prescriptions themselves. These findings suggest intentional, clinically inappropriate prescribing of opioids.

Keywords: opioids; health economics; drug safety (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2210226119 (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:nas:journl:v:119:y:2022:p:e2210226119

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Bibliographic data for series maintained by PNAS Product Team ().