Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
In the US, opioid abuse has become and epidemic. However, in the past year, there is some hope that this epidemic is starting to reverse. Opioid deaths have fallen by 16.9% in the past year. Why have deaths fallen? According to The Economist, no one is sure: One possibility is a supply shock…the amount of…
While opioid overdoses have been rising for decades, trends in most recent times provide us a glimmer of hope. NPR reports: For the first time in decades, public health data shows a sudden and hopeful drop in drug overdose deaths across the U.S.“This is exciting,” said Dr. Nora Volkow, head of the National Institute On…
That is the finding from a JAMA Network Open paper by Zhang et al. (2023). The authors use 2016-2022 data from the IQVIA Longitudinal Prescription Database, which claims to capture 92% of retail pharmacy prescriptions. First, fewer opioids prescriptions were made (extensive margin): During January 2016 to December 2022, the monthly surgical opioid dispensing rate…
National Institute for Health Care Management (NIHCM) examines trends in opioid overdoses in their recent infographic. Unsurprisingly, opioid deaths have risen dramatically in recent years, but may have plateaued in the last 12 months. Opioid deaths are more common among prime working age individuals (age 25-54). NIHCM used data from the Wide-ranging Online Data for…
RAND has an interesting report titled “The Future of Fentanyl and Other Synthetic Opioids.” What is truly startling is the rise in deaths due to synthetic opioids like fentanyl in the last 5 years: from 3,000 in 2013 to approximately 30,000 in 2018. In fact, synthetic opioids are now involved in twice as many deaths…
Most people who spend time in health care are aware of the opioid crisis. But how bad is it really? The National Institute for Health Care Management (NIHCM) Foundation provides a number of interactive graphs to quantitatively describe how the opioid crisis has evolved between 2000 and 2017. For instance, the the graph below shows…
According to a news report in The Globe and Mail, one of the primary reasons for falling life expectancy in Canada is the opioid epidemic. Life expectancy in Canada has stopped increasing for the first time in more than four decades, due largely to soaring overdose deaths in the Western provinces. In British Columbia, the…
In the news, deaths from overdoses of opioids, heroin and fentanyl have been in the spotlight. Rightly so. Opioid deaths in the U.S have risen to almost 50,000 people in 2017, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. However, deaths from methamphetamines is on the rise as well. In fact, many individuals who die…
In recent years, a number of states have legalized medical marijuana. While marijuana may not be good for you, can it be used as a substitute for more dangerous substances such as prescription opioids and heroin? To use an analogy, perhaps marijuana is to vaping ans opioids/heroin are to smoking. In fact, a recent paper…
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…