By Pat Anson, Editor

One of the largest medical organizations in California has significantly reduced high dose opioid prescribing for its patients and shifted many of them to generic opioids, according to the results of a new study by Kaiser Permanente of Southern California.

“You can treat pain differently without putting people on high doses of opioids,” said co-author Michael Kanter, MD, an executive with the Southern California Permanente Medical Group. “There is no proven benefit of long term opioid therapy.”

Researchers looked at prescription data for over 3 million Kaiser Permanente patients in southern California from 2010 to 2015, and found a 30 percent reduction in high dose opioid prescribing, along with a major decline in the prescribing of brand name opioids.

The medical group instituted system wide policies in 2010 that promoted safer prescribing and encouraged its 6,600 physicians to prescribe lower doses using cheaper, generic opioids.

The change in policy resulted in far fewer prescriptions being written for OxyContin, Opana, and brand name hydrocodone, oxycodone and codeine products. OxyContin was the first painkiller to have abuse deterrent properties, while Opana is being taken off the market because of concerns it is being abused.  Both are more expensive than generic opioids.

“This study adds promising results that a comprehensive system-level strategy has the ability to positively affect opioid prescribing,” Kanter and his colleagues wrote in the Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice.

Like other studies of its kind, however, the report did not assess whether there was any improvement in patient pain, function and quality of life, nor did it assess the impact of alternative pain therapies and treatments that were prescribed in lieu of opioids. Also unknown is whether the medical group’s policies resulted in fewer overdoses or cases of opioid misuse and addiction.

“But we did note that, generally speaking, patients were satisfied with the process that they went through,” said Kanter, adding that a subsequent research paper will be published on patient satisfaction.

Kanter told PNN that many pain patients take opioids long-term because of “therapeutic inertia” on the part of prescribers.

“We do know that some patients are just started on opioids for chronic pain, (their) doses may be increased over time, and they may be actually doing quite well pain-wise, but nobody takes the time to titrate their dose down and deescalate, and so a lot of the patients we think were just on too high of a dose for no real good reason,” Kanter explained. “Some of the patients, if not many, we think did just as well on lower doses.”

Several other medical groups and insurance companies have taken steps to reduce opioid prescribing, but the results so far have been mixed in terms of preventing overdoses.

As PNN has reported, opioid prescribing fell by 15 percent for members of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts after the state's largest insurer adopted policies in 2012 that discourage the dispensing of opioid medication. The new policies failed to slow the growing number of opioid overdose deaths in Massachusetts, which more than doubled. Many of those deaths were not due to painkillers, but linked to heroin and illicit fentanyl.

Blue Shield of California says its Narcotic Safety Initiative has resulted in an 11% reduction in members using high dose opioids and prevented 25% of all new opioid users from using the drugs for more than 90 days.  

Like the Kaiser Permanente study, the Blue Cross Blue Shield initiatives in California and Massachusetts did not assess the impact on patient pain, function and quality of life after opioid prescribing was lowered.

The opioid overdose death rate in California is 4.9 deaths per 100,000 people, less than half the national average. From 2014 to 2015, the opioid overdose rate in California declined by 2 percent, while the national average rose by 16 percent. Click here to see trends in your state.