Opioid Prescriptions Trending Down, But 115,000+ Patients Still Received "High-Risk Initial Opioid Prescriptions" Monthly

​A claims analysis of 86.3 million patients found that the prescribing rate for initial prescription of opioids decreased by more than half from July 2012 (1.63%) to December 2017 (0.75%). Findings of the analysis are published in the March 14, 2019, New England Journal of Medicine. The analysis also found that the monthly prevalence of overall opioid prescription rates remained near 4.3% from July 2012 until March 2016, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published opioid prescribing guidelines, and then decreased to 3.6% by December 2017.