A Wake Up Call for Employers: One-Third of Opioid Scripts Are Being Abused

Castlight, a health benefits platform provider focused on self-insured employers, published a report last week on the opioid crisis.  The authors were able to take a unique look at the problem through the lens of current data from self-insured employer clients (vs. latent data from public sources).

Lots of interesting data in the report, but here's the headline:

1 out of every 3 opioid prescriptions is being abused.   

I had three reactions, in the following order:

First, I knew that number would seem astronomically large to most people ("Seriously, one-third of all opioid scripts are being abused?  How can that be?")  Fact is there are more sad opioid statistics than most people realize.  It is the disease of not listening.  While it makes for admittedly depressing cocktail party conversation, it is a predictable interchange.  People know there's an issue... they just don't realize how broad and deep it goes.

Second, I personally thought that number seemed low.  While I recognize PRIUM's data is somewhat skewed by our focus on chronic and sub-acute pain (vs. acute pain), our physician consultants conclude that approximately 70% of the the medications we review are not medically necessary based on evidence based guidelines.  I recognize that "lack of medical necessity" and "abuse" are two different phenomenon, but when it comes to opioids specifically, the former tends to lead to the latter. So I thought 1/3 was low.

And that led me to my third reaction: How did Castlight define "abuse"?  They're looking at de-identified diagnosis and prescription data.  I wondered what methodology they used to identify opioid abuse.

Page 12 of the report details their approach:
Excluding cancer diagnoses and hospice care, Castlight defined abuse as meeting both of the following conditions:

1. Receiving greater than a cumulative 90-day supply of opioids; AND
2. Receiving an opioid prescription from four or more providers over the 5 year period between 2011 and 2015.  

Let's acknowledge that this is, at best, a proxy for abuse.  Might there be patients who are defined as "abusers" in the Castlight data who are not, in fact, opioid abusers?  Is it possible that a patient could receive opioid scripts from 4 or more docs over 5 years and not be an abuser?  Of course it's possible.  

But I think the Castlight approach is actually quite conservative.  Using a cut off of 4 prescribers likely leaves out a material number of patients who are abusing opioids but happen to secure their prescriptions regularly from as few as a single provider.  By the way, Castlight doesn't capture work comp data.  So we know (unfortunately) that 1/3 statistic is low.  

A wake up call for self-insured employers?  Hopefully. 

Michael 

On Twitter @PRIUM1

Drug Abuse and the 2016 Presidential Election

In last week's State of the Union address, President Obama mentioned prescription drug abuse as an issue where he saw opportunity for bipartisan compromise.  Notably, he mentioned this in the first three minutes of the speech.  And not coincidentally, he mentioned it in the same breath as another, related issue that will be a necessary component of prescription drug abuse mitigation: criminal justice reform.

Governor Chris Christie has made prescription drug abuse a centerpiece of his stump speech.  He regularly shares a personal experience of losing a close friend from law school to an overdose.  Just last week, Christie made headlines by shutting down a New Jersey prison in order to convert it to a drug addiction treatment facility.  "The victims of addiction deserve treatment..." he said.

In last night's Democratic primary debate, Secretary Clinton and Senator Sanders both touched on the subject.  After noting that she hears of horrible stories wherever she goes on the campaign trail and after advocating for first responders to carry and be authorized to use Narcan, she closed her comments along the same lines as Governor Christie: "We have to move away from treating the use of drugs as a crime and instead, move it to where it belongs, as a health issue.  And we need to divert more people from the criminal justice system into drug courts, into treatment, and recovery."  Senator Sanders added, after placing at least some of the blame at the feet of the pharmaceutical companies, that "we need a revolution in this country in terms of mental health treatment."

This is clearly going to be a 2016 presidential campaign issue.  Beyond the mere fact that crises often make for strange bedfellows (Clinton and Christie offering nearly interchangeable quotes?!?!), why are we hearing more about prescription drug abuse from candidates now than ever before?

First, New Hampshire.  Everyone knows the Granite State figures prominently as the first primary - on February 9 - in both parties' nomination process (Iowa - on February 1 - is a caucus, not a primary).  What many may fail to recognize is that New Hampshire's citizens have been hit especially hard by the opioid/heroin epidemic over the last several years.  A quarter of New Hampshire voters believe prescription drug and heroin abuse is the single most important issue of the 2016 election, marking the first time in eight years a plurality of voters have ranked any issue more important than jobs and the economy.  If you're going to win the New Hampshire primary - from either party - you better be prepared to address prescription drug misuse and abuse.  

Second, it's not an exaggeration to say that we're losing a material portion of entire generation of Americans to this epidemic.  First, we saw the findings of a recent study from the National Academy of Sciences indicating that the death rate among white, middle-aged Americans has grown over the last two decades while the death rate among almost all other groups has declined.  Now, the New York Times has analyzed nearly 60 million death certificates collected by the CDC and found that the death rate among young, white adults has risen to levels not seen since the AIDS epidemic of the late 1980s and early 1990s.  This generation will be the first since the Vietnam War to experience higher death rates in early adulthood than the generation that preceded it.  The figures indicate that the 2014 death rate from prescription drug and heroin overdose among 25 to 34 year olds was five times its level in 1999.  

We have presidential candidates talking about this issue because it is the preeminent public health issue of our time.  If there's any comfort for us at all, it's that both parties appear to be taking it seriously.  If there's to be a concern, it's that whoever wins will need to make difficult decisions and real progress.  We're losing a generation of Americans.  

Michael
On Twitter @PRIUM1

A Sad Addition to our Shared Experiences

Think of the number of truly consequential experiences that Americans have in common.  Not the "mom and apple pie" stuff, but experiences that really impact our lives in deep and meaningful ways.  How many of us know someone affected by cancer?  How many of us are products of our public education system?  How many of us have lost a loved one?  

Thanks to the results of the recent Kaiser Health Tracking Poll, we can now add another shared experience among Americans: more than half of us (56%) know someone connected to prescription drug misuse or abuse.  45% of us know someone who has taken a prescription drug not prescribed to them.  39% of us know someone who has been addicted to prescription drugs.  16% of us know someone who has died from an overdose of prescription painkillers.  (56% of those polled answered "yes" to at least one of these questions).  

Interestingly, the poll reveals a demographic and socioeconomic trend around those who answered "yes" to at least one of the questions (know someone who took a drug not prescribed, know someone who has been addicted, or know someone who has died of an overdose).  The top 8 groups, by percentage of those polled answering "yes" at least once:

• 63% of whites
• 63% of those making more than $90k per year 
• 62% of those aged 18-29
• 61% of those aged 30-49
• 61% of those having "some" college education
• 59% of those with a college degree
• 59% with residency in a suburban area
• 59% of males  

That paints a picture of the prescription drug misuse and abuse epidemic.  

And yet, when asked to prioritize public policy goals, reducing drug abuse comes in 6th:

1. Public education
2. Affordable/available healthcare
3. Reducing crime
4. Attracting and retaining businesses and jobs
5. Protecting the environment
6. Reducing drug abuse
7. Reforming the criminal justice system

In studying this list... I wonder if we can't make a significant impact on #6 by tackling #2, #3, and #7. What if we thought differently about mental healthcare?  What if we thought differently about addiction?  What if we didn't treat addicts like criminals?  It's possible - and the regulatory and private enterprise infrastructure to make that happen is actually developing all around us. 

There is hope.   

Michael  

On Twitter @PRIUM1