Exploratory descriptive analysis of opioid prescribing prevalence of nurse practitioners and the specialties associated with the top prescribers

Background Opioid prescription drug abuse is increasingly becoming a concern beyond the United States. Little is known regarding nurse practitioners' opioid prescribing patterns or settings. Aim To examine nurse practitioners' opioid prescription patterns. Methods We conducted a retrospective cross‐sectional descriptive study of the 2016 Medicare Part D Prescriber Public Use File and analysed the association between the number of nurse practitioners and the number of opioid prescriptions. We conducted Web searches on the top 1% of prescribers to obtain the specialty areas in which nurse practitioners worked. Results There was no significant correlation between the prevalence of nurse practitioners and the opioid prescription rates among the states in the United States. Most nurse practitioners do not prescribe opioids. Opioid prescription is highly concentrated among nurse practitioners, as 1% of nurse practitioners account for one third of opioids prescribed by nurse practitioners. Most of the top 1% opioid prescribers practice in specialty care with board‐certified pain medicine physicians. Conclusions The prevalence of nurse practitioners is not likely a significant contributing factor to the opioid epidemic. Rather than increased scrutiny of opioid prescribing, a better approach to curb the opioid crisis might be to facilitate collaboration among physicians, nurse practitioners and patients.