NBC News (9/11, Fox) reports on its website that according to research published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, a review of medical records from 2006 to 2015 “showed that a physician gave no explanation at all for writing an opioid prescription in 29 percent of the cases.” The findings by researchers at Harvard Medical School and the Rand Corp. “help support criticism by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and others that say inappropriate prescribing practices have helped drive the opioid crisis.”
The Boston Globe (9/10, Finucane) reports “inappropriate prescribing, bad recordkeeping, or a combination of both were possible reasons for the missing data, according to the researchers.” Study author Tisamarie Sherry said, “Whatever the reasons, lack of robust documentation undermines our efforts to understand physician prescribing patterns and curtails our ability to stem overprescribing.”
Related Links:
— “Doctors gave no reason for a third of opioid prescriptions, study finds, “Maggie Fox, NBC News, September 10, 2018.