JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Reductions in opioid prescribing by health care providers can lead to a decreased risk of opioid dependence in patients. Peer comparison has been demonstrated to impact providers’ prescribing habits, though its effect on opioid prescribing has predominantly been studied in the emergency department setting.

Objective:

The objective of this study is to describe the methodology for generating a quarterly “opioid scorecard”.

Methods:

Utilizing data generated by the author’s enterprise vendor-based EHR, the enterprise analytics software and expertise from a dedicated group of informaticists, physicians, and analysts, the authors have created quarterly scorecards for all opioid prescribers that are distributed automatically via email. These scorecards compare providers’ opioid prescribing habits, based on established metrics, to their peers within their specialty throughout the enterprise.

Results:

To date, 2,034 providers have received at least one scorecard. A reduction in post-implementation quarterly prescribing frequencies has been observed. To the authors knowledge, this is the first peer comparison effort with high quality evidence-based metrics of this scale published in the literature.

Conclusions:

By sharing this process for designing the metrics and process of distribution, the authors hope to influence other health systems to attempt to curb the opioid pandemic through peer comparison. Future research examining the effects of this intervention could demonstrate significant reductions in opioid prescribing, thus potentially reducing the progression of individual patients to opioid use disorder, and the associated increased risk of morbidity and mortality.