January 23, 2023 – Significantly fewer patients are being prescribed opioids once they are discharged from a hospital emergency department, in line with a brand new report.
From 2019 to 2020, 8.1% of adults who visited the emergency department were prescribed opioids upon discharge, in line with a new analysis from the CDC. This is a decrease from 12.2% in 2017-2018 and from 21.5% in 2010-2011.
Reducing hospital prescriptions for the highly addictive painkillers is a key a part of the national technique to combat the opioid epidemic. According to the CDC, as much as 1 in 4 people prescribed opioids suffer from opioid addiction.
The report published this month is an element of the CDC National Survey on Outpatient Medical Care in Hospitals 2020which included data from emergency department visits at 294 hospitals across the country. The researchers said they specified two-year time periods since it allowed them to incorporate more data, making the statistical evaluation more meaningful.
The rate of opioid prescriptions at discharge also declined, with them offered after 36.4 emergency department visits per 1,000 adults in 2019-2020, compared with 50.5 visits per 1,000 adults in 2017-2018.
There were decreases in most demographic groups within the report, including men, women, whites, and blacks. However, a major decline in prescriptions to Hispanics was not observed. In previous years, women were significantly more more likely to be prescribed opioids at discharge than men, but this difference was not as pronounced in 2019-2020.
The drugs, equivalent to oxycodone and hydrocodone, are sometimes prescribed after surgery or injury or during cancer treatment. This latest report will help health officials see if their strategy to scale back prescriptions is on target, since previous studies have shown that emergency room prescriptions increase the chance of addiction, the researchers write.