Ohio Doctors continue to prescribe fewer pain pills

http://www.dispatch.com/news/20180305/ohio-doctors-contine-to-prescribe-fewer-pain-pills

While overall drug overdose deaths continue to climb, Ohio doctors for the fifth straight year prescribed fewer opioid painkillers to patients.

 

In 2017, 568 million pain pills were dispensed, down 28 percent from a high of 793 million in 2012, according to an annual report released Monday by the Ohio Board of Pharmacy.

The report also showed an 88 percent drop since 2011 in the number of patients going from doctor to doctor in search of drugs.

State officials credited increased use of the Ohio Automated Rx Reporting System, OARRS, which tracks prescriptions. Nearly 89 million patient queries were made in 2017, up from 1.8 million in 2011.

“Ohio has one of the most comprehensive and aggressive approaches in the country to tackling the opioid epidemic,” said Ohio Board of Pharmacy Executive Director Steven W. Schierholt.

“Through improvements to OARRS, new prescribing rules and guidelines, shuttering pill mills and aggressive regulatory action against unscrupulous prescribers, the state is making considerable progress in reducing the supply of prescription opioids and other controlled substances that can be abused or diverted.”

 Still, Ohio had a record 4,050 overdose deaths in 2017, up 33 percent from 2015.

Much of the spike was attributed to fentanyl, a highly potent and deadly synthetic opioid being mixed into street drugs like heroin, cocaine, marijuana and other illegal substances. Meanwhile, deaths from prescription opioids last year were at their lowest levels since 2009.

Do you think that Gov Kasich and the rest of the bureaucrats in OHIO will ever figure it out that addiction(s) is a mental health issue and prohibition and abstinence will never do much to resolve the opiate addiction problem ? They all “scream and shout” about opiates don’t work for long term treatment of chronic pain .. because there is no long term clinical studies, but all of these bureaucrats seem to believe that reducing access to opiates – especially legal opiates will cause “demand” for opiates to drop and go away…  but the BODY COUNT would suggest that they are DEAD WRONG…but this is just anecdotal evidence that suggest that this will not work… but.. there does not appear that there are any clinical studies on the horizon to validate.

 

Filed under: General Problems