A recent feature by the Columbus Dispatch highlights troubling data in regard to the American opioid dependency problem: while the number of prescriptions written for such painkillers by medical professionals dropped between 2010 and 2015, the potency of those prescriptions was more than triple the level of prescriptions issued less than two decades prior.
Those statistics were part of a new report from the Centers from Disease Control, which measured national opioid prescribing practices between 2010 and 2015. The report’s authors found that while opioid prescriptions had been reduced by 18%, the amount of opioids in those prescriptions, which is measured in morphine milligram equivalents, or MME, was significantly higher in 2015 (approximately 640 MME) than even in 1999 (approximately 180 MMM).
The Dispatch cited the report’s statistics on Franklin County – the most populous county in the state, and the location of the state capital in Columbus – where doctors issued more than 40% less painkillers to patients during the report’s time frame, but the MME level of those prescriptions was enough to provide all 1,264,518 residents (as of May 2017) with, as the Dispatch feature noted, a two-week supply of drugs.
Statewide, the report saw that prescriptions were down nearly 10% in all but a few counties, but MME remained high in even areas that posted the most substantial decreases, including Delaware (30%) and Fairfield (28%) counties.
The Dispatch feature showed that greatest decrease was seen in Vinton County, which saw a 98% decrease, which allowed just six MME per person. The highest was Jackson County, where doctors prescribed 1,582 MME per person, or as the Dispatch noted, twice the national rate. These numbers, while significant, don’t compare to staggering figures found in several Wisconsin cities like Martinsville, where prescriptions were measured at 4,000 MME per year – the most substantial in any town or county for which data was available.
The Dispatch feature also quoted Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, who said that while the numbers could be construed as encouraging, his state remained in need of curbing its opioid prescription numbers. “We have started to turn this around, but it’s tough to change the culture, and the culture in this case I’m talking about is the culture of prescribing,” he noted.
And Dr. Steven Severyn, director of the Pain Services and Pain Medicine Fellowship at Ohio University Wexner Medical Center, said that doctors in his state, as well as across the country, are attempting to address the opioid issue through smarter prescribing.
“Prescription narcotic medication really is the dominant form of narcotic use, at least early in drug addiction,” he shared. “Physicians are responding to that understanding by being certain that the use of medications for the treatment of pain is appropriate in dosing and frequency and especially escalation.”
Among the efforts in place to supplant the use of opioids is Severyn’s own program, which relies on an array of pain relief methods outside of prescriptions, including physical and psychological therapy. And as the Dispatch detailed, the Ohio Board of Pharmacy, too, has outlined strategies for medical professionals on safer alternatives to opioids, including a prescription drug-monitoring program, which can lessen incidents of “doctor shopping” by informing medical professionals if a patient has been given prescriptions.
The state’s Joint Committee on Agency Rule Review is also expected to soon view a proposal that seeks to reduce prescription amounts for patients suffering from acute pain.
