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Reduction of Parenteral Opioid Use in Community Emergency Departments Following Implementation of Treatment Guidelines
Author(s) -
Ghobadi Ali,
Van Winkle Patrick J.,
Menchine Michael,
Chen Qiaoling,
Huang Brian Z.,
Sharp Adam L.
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
academic emergency medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.221
H-Index - 124
eISSN - 1553-2712
pISSN - 1069-6563
DOI - 10.1111/acem.13395
Subject(s) - medicine , emergency department , opioid , odds ratio , guideline , chronic pain , cohort , emergency medicine , logistic regression , cohort study , retrospective cohort study , physical therapy , psychiatry , receptor , pathology
Objective Opioid prescribing guidelines are commonly seen as part of the solution to America's opioid epidemic. However, the effectiveness of specific treatment guidelines on altering opioid prescribing in the emergency department ( ED ) is unclear. We examined provider ordering patterns before and after implementation of opioid use guidelines for ED patients overall and the specific subsets of ED patients with either chronic opioid use or fracture. Methods We conducted a pre–post interrupted time series analysis of adult (≥18 years old) ED encounters in 14 integrated community ED s before (2013) and after (2014) the implementation of opioid prescribing guidelines. We compared opioid use pre‐ and postintervention using segmented logistic regression for primary and secondary analyses. The primary outcome was parenteral opioid use in the ED , with additional subgroup analysis of chronic pain and fracture cohorts. We also examined ED oral opioid use and discharge prescribing. Results There were 508,337 pre‐ and 531,620 postintervention encounters. The intervention was associated with an initial reduction in the odds of parenteral opioids ordered (odds ratio [ OR ] = 0.89, 95% CI = 0.87–0.91) and a decrease in the monthly trend compared to the preintervention period ( OR = 0.99, 95% CI = 0.99–0.99). The immediate reduction in parenteral opioid use was significantly larger in the cohort of patients with chronic pain ( OR = 0.81, 95% CI = 0.72–0.91), whereas the fracture cohort showed no change ( OR = 1.10, 95% CI = 0.97–1.25). Conclusion The use of an opioid ordering guideline was associated with significant reduction in parenteral opioid use in the ED and as intended subgroup comparisons suggest that acute fractures were not affected and chronic pain visits were associated with larger decreases in opioid use.