The Comptroller’s Office has released a new report that examines the opioid prescribing patterns of Tennessee’s doctors, nurses, dentists, and other licensed practitioners. Comptroller researchers worked to identify prescribers whose patterns were “significantly statistically abnormal,” and to investigate what disciplinary responses, if any, were taken by the licensing boards in response.
The Comptroller’s Office of Research and Education Accountability (OREA) identified 62 prescribers for further investigation based on their 2017 prescribing patterns. It is important to note that identification by OREA for further investigation alone did not indicate inappropriate prescribing. Prescribing data can be used as a tool to find potentially inappropriate prescribing, but a fuller range of information is necessary to determine if an identified prescribing pattern is inappropriate.
Forty-nine of the 62 prescribers identified by OREA (79 percent) have not been disciplined by their licensing board since the start of 2017 and are not currently under investigation by the department. Eight of the 62 prescribers identified by OREA received some level of discipline since the start of 2017, and the department is developing cases against the remaining five prescribers.
The report includes three policy considerations that address the Department of Health’s use of data to identify potentially inappropriate prescribers and the role of consultants in determining whether to seek discipline against practitioners with potentially inappropriate prescribing patterns.
To read the report, please visit the Comptroller’s OREA website at: tncot.cc/orea
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