Dataset Information

Assessing the impact of a restrictive opioid prescribing law in West Virginia.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The Opioid Reduction Act (SB 273) took effect in West Virginia in June 2018. This legislation limited ongoing chronic opioid prescriptions to 30?days' supply, and first-time opioid prescriptions to 7?days' supply for surgeons and 3?days' for emergency rooms and dentists. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of this legislation on reducing opioid prescriptions in West Virginia, with the goal of informing future similar policy efforts.

Methods

Data were requested from the state Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP) including overall number of opioid prescriptions, number of first-time opioid prescriptions, average daily morphine milligram equivalents (MME) and prescription duration (expressed as "days' supply") given to adults during the 64?week time periods before and after legislation enactment. Statistical analysis was done utilizing an autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) interrupted time series analysis to assess impact of both legislation announcement and enactment while controlling secular trends and considering autocorrelation trends. Benzodiazepine prescriptions were utilized as a control.

Results

Our analysis demonstrates a significant decrease in overall state opioid prescribing as well as a small change in average daily MME associated with the date of the legislation's enactment when considering serial correlation in the time series and accounting for pre-intervention trends. There was no such association found with benzodiazepine prescriptions.

Conclusion

Results of the current study suggest that SB 273 was associated with an average 22.1% decrease of overall opioid prescriptions and a small change in average daily MME relative to the date of legislative implementation in West Virginia. There was, however, no association of the legislation on first-time opioid prescriptions or days' supply of opioid medication, and all variables were trending downward prior to implementation of SB 273. The control demonstrated no relationship to the law.

SUBMITTER: Sedney CL

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7852151 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Assessing the impact of a restrictive opioid prescribing law in West Virginia.

Sedney Cara L CL Khodaverdi Maryam M Pollini Robin R Dekeseredy Patricia P Wood Nathan N Haggerty Treah T

Substance abuse treatment, prevention, and policy 20210201 1

<h4>Background</h4>The Opioid Reduction Act (SB 273) took effect in West Virginia in June 2018. This legislation limited ongoing chronic opioid prescriptions to 30 days' supply, and first-time opioid prescriptions to 7 days' supply for surgeons and 3 days' for emergency rooms and dentists. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of this legislation on reducing opioid prescriptions in West Virginia, with the goal of informing future similar policy efforts.<h4>Methods</h4>Data were r ...[more]

PMID: 33526045

Similar Datasets

Project description:INTRODUCTION:This study evaluates if social distancing measures instituted during the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic were associated with a reduction in Medication for Opioid Use Disorder (MOUD) prescribing in West Virginia. The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated the quick implementation of public health interventions such as social distancing. This led to the use of telemedicine in the clinical setting however implementing telemedicine involves system level and infrastructure level changes within a healthcare environment. This could cause a barrier to MOUD delivery as it is often provided concomitantly with other face to face substance use and mental health services. The purpose of this study is to determine whether social distancing was associated with a reduction in MOUD prescribing in West Virginia, with the goal of adding to the knowledge of how COVID-19 and COVID-19-related mitigation strategies have impacted patients with OUD. METHODS:Prescription monitoring data were requested from the West Virginia Board of Pharmacy. We applied interrupted time series modeling to investigate MOUD prescribing practices before and after social distancing took effect. Gabapentin prescriptions were utilized as a control for comparison. RESULTS:Our study assessed state-wide buprenorphine and Suboxone prescriptions as compared to a control medication and found an increase in dosage of both medications and an increase in number of buprenorphine prescriptions, but a small decrease in buprenorphine/naloxone prescription number related to the dates of implementation of social distancing. Taken together, overall this indicates an increase in prescription number of MOUD prescriptions as well as an increase in dosage. CONCLUSION:This study suggests that social distancing measures were associated with an increase in both the number of MOUD prescriptions and the number of doses in each prescription. Significant alterations to MOUD delivery in the clinical setting were implemented in a short timeframe with the COVID-19 pandemic. Understanding the implementation of clinical measures to accommodate social distancing measures may provide benefit to transformation of future delivery of MOUD.

Dataset Information

Assessing the impact of a restrictive opioid prescribing law in West Virginia.

Background

Methods

Results

Conclusion

Publications

Assessing the impact of a restrictive opioid prescribing law in West Virginia.

Similar Datasets

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