Author: McKinley Corbley / Source: Good News Network
While legislators are attempting to tackle the opioid crisis by enforcing regulation, these researchers have found success in another kind of approach.
As a means of alerting physicians to the dangers and realities of overprescribing, the researchers worked through a local medical examiner to send letters to 381 physicians in San Diego County, California concerning their former patients.
Based on actual cases, the letters informed the physicians that a patient to whom they had given an opioid prescription had passed away of a fatal overdose. Enclosed with the letter was a CDC-approved set of guidelines for how health care professionals should safely be prescribing opioids.
Though the premise is sobering, the study results proved to be successful – clinicians who received the letters prescribed 10% less opioids than the clinicians in the control group who did not receive the letters. Not only that, physicians who received the notices were overall less likely to start patients on opioids and less likely to give patients higher doses of opioids.
“Most people addicted to opioids began taking them because…
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