• Barbara Andraka-Christou, Elizabeth McAvoy, Maggie Ohama, Rosanna Smart, Mary E Vaiana, Erin Taylor, and Bradley D Stein.
• School of Global Health Management & Informatics, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida.
• Pain Med. 2023 Feb 1; 24 (2): 130138130-138.

ObjectivesState policies can impact opioid prescribing or dispensing. Some state opioid policies have been widely examined in empirical studies, including prescription drug monitoring programs and pain clinic licensure requirements. Other relevant policies might exist that have received limited attention. Our objective was to identify and categorize a wide range of state policies that could affect opioid prescribing/dispensing.MethodsWe used stratified random sampling to select 16 states and Washington, DC, for our sample. We collected state regulations and statutes effective during 2020 from each jurisdiction, using search terms related to opioids, pain management, and prescribing/dispensing. We then conducted qualitative template analysis of the data to identify and categorize policy categories.ResultsWe identified three dimensions of opioid prescribing/dispensing laws: the prescribing/dispensing rule, its applicability, and its disciplinary consequences. Policy categories of prescribing/dispensing rules included clinic licensure, staff credentials, evaluating the appropriateness of opioids, limiting the initiation of opioids, preventing the diversion or misuse of opioids, and enhancing patient safety. Policy categories related to applicability of the law included the pain type, substance type, practitioner, setting, payer, and prescribing situation. The disciplinary consequences dimension included specific consequences and inspection processes.DiscussionPolicy categories within each dimension of opioid prescribing/dispensing laws could become a foundation for creating variables to support empirical analyses of policy effects, improving operationalization of policies in empirical studies, and helping to disentangle the effects of multiple state laws enacted at similar times to address the opioid crisis. Several of the policy categories we identified have been underexplored in previous empirical studies.© The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Academy of Pain Medicine. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

19 keywords...

hide…