Tag Archives: @JamaHealthForum

Uninsured Pay Higher Out-of-Pocket Costs for Opioid Antidote Naloxone

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Evan D. Peet, PhD Professor
Pardee RAND Graduate School

Dr. Peet

PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study?

Response: This study is part of a broader CDC funded project looking at access to naloxone and naloxone’s impacts on opioid-related overdose deaths. There have been increasing efforts to expand access to naloxone, with a variety of different laws being passed by states across the nation. But one part of access that has been understudied is the cost borne by patients.

High out-of-pocket costs may act as a barrier to this life-saving drug, so in this study we look at trends in out-of-pocket costs of naloxone and how they vary by payor and drug brand.

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Physicians Differently Prescribe Pain Relief Medications to White and Minority Patients

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Dan P. Ly M.D., M.P.P., Ph.D.
Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research
David Geffen School of Medicine
University of California, Los Angeles

PainRelief.com:  What is the background for this study?  What are the main findings?

Response: We know that minority patients were less likely to receive opioids than white patients, but this could have been due to minority patients seeing lower opioid-prescribing physicians. As far as I could tell, nobody had been able to examine whether the same physician prescribed opioids differently to their minority patients.

I find that this is the case: the same physician was less likely to prescribe opioids to their minority patients with new low back pain, and instead was more likely to prescribe NSAIDs to their minority patients. And unfortunately, this differential prescribing may have had the consequence of leading to more chronic opioid use in white patients.  

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