Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
epidemic. noun an outbreak of disease that spreads quickly and affects many individuals at the same time : an outbreak of epidemic disease an outbreak or product of sudden rapid spread, growth, or development The opioid epidemic is one that has impact a large number of Americans. Data from 2019 shows that there were over…
How is opioid use trending over time? Among individuals who filed for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), a paper by Maestas et al. (2022) finds that: …the prevalence of opioid use among SSDI applicants declined from 33 percent in 2013 to 24 percent in 2018. By contrast, the share of applicants reporting musculoskeletal impairments, which…
Some people use opioids as a recreational drug. If people choose to ruin their own life, that is their problem. Others take opioids when prescribed from physicians and unwittingly become addicted. In either case, there is one scourge that may not fully be appreciated: parents who take opioids risk having their kids go into their…
FDA is encouraging the development of abuse-deterrent formulations of opioids. What are abuse-deterrent formulations (ADF)? FDA explains: Abuse-deterrent formulations target the known or expected routes of abuse, such as crushing in order to snort or dissolving in order to inject, for the specific opioid drug substance. The good news is that ADF opioids reduce the…
Using Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project data between 1997 and 2014, Tedesco et al. (2017) find that–like many other studies–that the opioid epidemic has exploded in the last two decades. [Inpatient] discharge rates for prescription opioid poisoning increased significantly by 8.0 percent annually from 1997 to 2010 in the inpatient setting and 5.0 percent annually from…
An interesting article by Cochran et al. (2017) examines whether health plan prior authorization rules can help prevent opioid abuse. The authors use Pennsylvania Medicaid data from 2010 to 2012. The data included both fee-for-service and managed care enrollees. The authors measured opioid abuse based on diagnosis codes for opioid use disorder (304.0, 304.00, 304.01,…