COLUMBUS – A state report indicates Ohio is making progress in stemming the tide of opioid addiction on one front – legally prescribed painkillers – while still struggling to fight the scourge of illegal drugs.
For the sixth year in a row, the number of prescription opioids dispensed declined last year, according to the report from the State of Ohio Board of Pharmacy’s Ohio Automated Rx Reporting System, a prescription information clearinghouse.
From 2012 to 2018, the number of doses of opioids dispended to Ohio patient declined by 41 percent, or 325 million doses, while doctors handed out 4.6 million fewer prescriptions for opioid painkillers.
The report suggests that doctors and pharmacists are turning to the OARRS database to discourage “doctor shopping” by patients looking for doctors who are willing to write prescriptions for opioids.
More than 142 million reports on patients were requested by healthcare providers in 2018 and the number of Ohioans engaging in doctor shopping dropped by 89 percent.
Established in 2006 as the nation’s first statewide integration program, OARRS collects information on all outpatient prescriptions for controlled substances and two non-controlled substances — gabapentin and naltrexone – written by doctors and dispensed by pharmacies.
The data is available to prescribers, pharmacists and law enforcement officers and regulatory agencies.