Incidence and Risk Factors for Progression From Short-term to Episodic or Long-term Opioid Prescribing: A Population-Based Study

To determine what proportion of a geographically defined population who receive new opioid prescriptions progresses to episodic or long-term patterns of opioid prescribing and to explore the clinical characteristics associated with patterns of opioid prescribing. Population-based drug prescription records for the population of Olmsted County between January 1 and December 31, 2009, were obtained using the Rochester Epidemiology Project medical records linkage system (N=142,377). All medical records were reviewed for a random sample of 293 patients who had a new ("incident") prescription for an opioid analgesic in 2009. Patients were followed through their medical records for 1 year after their initial prescription date, with patterns of opioid prescribing categorized as short-term, episodic, or long-term. Overall, 293 patients received 515 new opioid prescriptions in 2009. Of these, 61 (21%) progressed to an episodic prescribing pattern and 19 (6%) progressed to a long-term prescribing pattern. In multivariable logistic regression analyses, substance abuse was significantly associated (P