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Disparities in naloxone prescriptions in a University Hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic

BACKGROUND: Per the CDC, it is estimated that 69,710 opioid overdose deaths occurred in the United States from September 2019 to September 2020. However, it is unclear whether naloxone prescribing also increased or otherwise fluctuated in this time. The objective of this study was to characterize th...

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Autores principales: Chieh, Kimberly, Patel, Ishika, Walter, Lauren, Li, Li
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9321310/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35883136
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12954-022-00667-9
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author Chieh, Kimberly
Patel, Ishika
Walter, Lauren
Li, Li
author_facet Chieh, Kimberly
Patel, Ishika
Walter, Lauren
Li, Li
author_sort Chieh, Kimberly
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Per the CDC, it is estimated that 69,710 opioid overdose deaths occurred in the United States from September 2019 to September 2020. However, it is unclear whether naloxone prescribing also increased or otherwise fluctuated in this time. The objective of this study was to characterize the naloxone prescribing rate in patients with opioid use disorder (OUD) at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital in 2019 and 2020. METHODS: A cross-sectional, retrospective medical record review was performed on patients with OUD from January 2019 through December 2020. Naloxone prescribing, defined as either a written prescription or a provided take-home kit, was assessed for all patients with OUD. RESULTS: In 2019, 11,959 visits were made by 2962 unique patients with OUD, compared to 11,661 visits from 2,641 unique patients in 2020; 609 naloxone prescriptions were provided in 2019 (5.1%) and 619 in 2020 (5.3%). In both years, most OUD-related visits and naloxone prescriptions were from and to male, white, individuals. Compared with 2019, more naloxone prescriptions were given to uninsured patients in 2020 (33.2% vs 44.3%, p < 0.05), and more OUD patients were admitted to inpatient settings (26.0% vs 31.2%, p < 0.05) and received more naloxone prescriptions in the inpatient setting (46.3% vs 62.0%, p < 0.05) in 2020. The proportion of frequent users (i.e., visits ≥ 4 times/year) increased in 2020 for the emergency department (21.5% vs 26.4%, p < 0.001) and inpatient setting (24.9% vs 28.6%, p = 0.03). CONCLUSIONS: Our findings indicate the need for improving naloxone awareness in providers and prescribing for patients with OUD, particularly in emergency department and outpatient settings. Our results also demonstrated a disparity in naloxone prescribing; a disproportionate number of opioid-related emergency department visits and overdose deaths were noted in Black people and frequent users.
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spelling pubmed-93213102022-07-27 Disparities in naloxone prescriptions in a University Hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic Chieh, Kimberly Patel, Ishika Walter, Lauren Li, Li Harm Reduct J Research BACKGROUND: Per the CDC, it is estimated that 69,710 opioid overdose deaths occurred in the United States from September 2019 to September 2020. However, it is unclear whether naloxone prescribing also increased or otherwise fluctuated in this time. The objective of this study was to characterize the naloxone prescribing rate in patients with opioid use disorder (OUD) at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital in 2019 and 2020. METHODS: A cross-sectional, retrospective medical record review was performed on patients with OUD from January 2019 through December 2020. Naloxone prescribing, defined as either a written prescription or a provided take-home kit, was assessed for all patients with OUD. RESULTS: In 2019, 11,959 visits were made by 2962 unique patients with OUD, compared to 11,661 visits from 2,641 unique patients in 2020; 609 naloxone prescriptions were provided in 2019 (5.1%) and 619 in 2020 (5.3%). In both years, most OUD-related visits and naloxone prescriptions were from and to male, white, individuals. Compared with 2019, more naloxone prescriptions were given to uninsured patients in 2020 (33.2% vs 44.3%, p < 0.05), and more OUD patients were admitted to inpatient settings (26.0% vs 31.2%, p < 0.05) and received more naloxone prescriptions in the inpatient setting (46.3% vs 62.0%, p < 0.05) in 2020. The proportion of frequent users (i.e., visits ≥ 4 times/year) increased in 2020 for the emergency department (21.5% vs 26.4%, p < 0.001) and inpatient setting (24.9% vs 28.6%, p = 0.03). CONCLUSIONS: Our findings indicate the need for improving naloxone awareness in providers and prescribing for patients with OUD, particularly in emergency department and outpatient settings. Our results also demonstrated a disparity in naloxone prescribing; a disproportionate number of opioid-related emergency department visits and overdose deaths were noted in Black people and frequent users. BioMed Central 2022-07-26 /pmc/articles/PMC9321310/ /pubmed/35883136 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12954-022-00667-9 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Chieh, Kimberly
Patel, Ishika
Walter, Lauren
Li, Li
Disparities in naloxone prescriptions in a University Hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic
title Disparities in naloxone prescriptions in a University Hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic
title_full Disparities in naloxone prescriptions in a University Hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic
title_fullStr Disparities in naloxone prescriptions in a University Hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic
title_full_unstemmed Disparities in naloxone prescriptions in a University Hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic
title_short Disparities in naloxone prescriptions in a University Hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic
title_sort disparities in naloxone prescriptions in a university hospital during the covid-19 pandemic
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9321310/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35883136
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12954-022-00667-9
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