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In the past decade, U.S. clinicians have been urged to rethink their opioid prescribing practices; the Centers for Disease Control issued formal guidelines to limit use, shorten duration, and lessen potency. How have clinicians responded? To examine recent nationwide trends in opioid prescribing, researchers probed data from a large commercial insurer's claims database. Among more than 86 million enrollees (age, ≥15), about 20 million received at least one opioid prescription between July 2012 and December 2017; about half of such patients were considered to be opioid-naive. Individuals with Medicare were excluded, as were those receiving methadone and buprenorphine.
Fifty percent fewer enrollees received new opioid prescriptions in December…