Trends in Opioid Dosing Among of Washington State Medicaid Patients Before and After Opioid Dosing Guideline Implementation

By 2007, opioid-related mortality in Washington State (WA) was 50% higher than the national average, with Medicaid patients showing nearly 6 times the mortality of commercially-insured patients. In 2007, the WA Interagency Guideline on Opioid Dosing for Chronic Non-cancer Pain was released, which recommended caution in prescribing >120mg morphine-equivalent dose (MED) per day for patients not showing clinically meaningful improvement in pain and function. We report here on opioid dosing in the WA Medicaid fee-for-service population for 273,200 adults with a paid claim for an opioid prescription between 4-1-2006 and 12-31-2010.

from The Journal of Pain http://ift.tt/1KLt03R
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