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

Abstract

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.

Florida Nurse Practitioner’s Desired Knowledge of Medical Marijuana and Interest in Obtaining Medical Marijuana Authorization Privileges

“…This argument was similar to the points raised about NPs receiving rights that allowed for the prescription of opioids. Pan and Collins (2020) conducted a quantitative, descriptive study of 137,777 NPs in the US and their opioid prescriptive patterns in relation to physicians since gaining prescriptive authority of opioid medications. It was found that NPs do not contribute more to the opioid pandemic than any other prescribing provider.…”

“…Among NPs, only 39.7% prescribe opioids, compared with 76.0% of family practice physicians, 92.3% of orthopedic surgeons and 94.0% of pain management physicians. Also, in states where NPs have full independent practice authority, only 48.3% prescribe opioid medication (Pan & Collins, 2020). Similarly, Mcmichael (2021) conducted a review of 1.5 billion individual opioid prescriptions between 2011 and 2018 and grouped them by provider type to include a subset of independent NPs with full practice authority without any physician involvement.…”

“…As previously mentioned, NPs have a history of safely prescribing controlled substances. Pan and Collins (2020) conducted a study which found that NPs were prescribing significantly fewer opioid medications (after gaining opioid prescriptive authority) compared to family practice physicians. Mcmichael (2021) found similar results in individual opioid prescriptions written by independent NPs between 2011 and 2018 with a significant decline in total annual opioid prescriptions.…”