State Variation in Chronic Opioid Use in Nursing Home Residents Decreases

Between 2014 and 2018, variation at the state level in chronic opioid use among long-term care nursing home residents dropped by a third, according to study findings published online ahead of print in the Journal of the American Medical Directors Association. 

“National guidelines on opioid use and federal policies on opioid use may have contributed to reducing state-level variation in chronic opioid use,” wrote first author Hemalkumar B. Mehta, PhD, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and coauthors. 

The retrospective cohort study examined trends in opioid use lasting 90 days or more in nursing home residents over the 5-year period. Researchers used the nursing home Minimum Data Set and Medicare claims for 1.5 million residents with a total 3.2 million stays of 120 days or longer.

Between 2014 and 2018, chronic opioid use among nursing home residents decreased from 14.1% to 11.4%, according to the study.  

When researchers looked at variations in chronic opioid use by state, and by nursing home, they found that difference among states decreased from 2.5% in 2014 to 1.7% in 2018. Variation by nursing homes, however, increased from 5.6% to 6.5% over the same period. 

“Variation in chronic opioid use declined by one-third at the state level,” they wrote, “but not at the nursing home level.” 

Reference:
Mehta HB, Kuo YF, Raji M, et al. State Variation in Chronic Opioid Use in Long-Term Care Nursing Home Residents [published online ahead of print, 2021 May 19]. J Am Med Dir Assoc. 2021;S1525-8610(21)00394-7. doi:10.1016/j.jamda.2021.04.016