Ohio Follows Suit on CDC’s Opioid Guidelines

(Spring 2016) The Governor’s Cabinet Opiate Action Team adopted new opiate prescribing guidelines for the short-term pain management of conditions resulting from injuries, surgeries and dental procedures. These new regulations mirror those recently proposed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The guidelines encourage the use of non-opioid treatments when possible as well as reducing the number of opioids used to treat acute pain. The new framework recommends that physicians prescribe the least amount of opioids necessary without automatic refills.

Ohio doctors are also advised to consult the State Board of Pharmacy’s Automated Rx Reporting System (OARRS) prior to prescribing opioid medication. Checking the OARRS system is generally a requirement for most opioid and benzodiazepine prescriptions of one week or more. To make this process easier, Governor Kasich has allotted up to $1.5 million annually to integrate OARRS into digital medical records and pharmacy dispensing systems across the state, granting immediate access for both doctors and pharmacists.

Many are already embracing OARRS with the number of prescriber and pharmacist queries increasing from 778,000 in 2010 to 9.3 million in 2014 and resulted in a significant decrease in the number of opioid doses dispensed from 2012 to 2014. Additionally, the use of OARRS has reduced the number of individuals “doctor shopping” for controlled medications in Ohio from over 3,100 in 2009 to approximately 960 in 2014. The number of patients prescribed opioid doses above chronic pain guidelines also declined by 11% from the last quarter of 2013 to the second quarter of 2015. Furthermore, Ohio patients receiving simultaneous prescriptions for opioids and benzodiazepine sedatives fell 8% from the final quarter of 2013 to the second quarter of 2015.

The sheer number of opioids prescriptions written in Ohio makes the increased use of OARRS an important advancement. In 2014, over 262 million opioid doses were prescribed in the Buckeye State for the management of acute pain. This represents 35% of the state’s 750 million total dispensed opioid doses.

Prescription opioids are a leading cause of unintentional drug overdose fatalities in Ohio, contributing to almost 50% of all injury-related mortalities in 2014.

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