According to a recently published study, Chronic opioid therapy (COT) for noncancer pain is found associated with increased health care spending as well as hospital stays. Patients who transitioned to COT, which is defined as daily or near-daily use of opioids for at least 90 days, had total health care expenditures of $4607, higher than those patients who did not continue long-term opioid use. Total expenditures, without prescription drugs, were defined as the sum of emergency department, inpatient, physician, and other spending.
Inpatient spending alone among the COT group was $2453 higher than that of patients who did not transition to COT. With around 126 million Americans experiencing some type of pain in the past 3 months, payers, government agencies, and medical associations are trying to encourage nonopioid therapies for chronic noncancer pain. In 2017, opioid-related deaths…
