Opioids Are More Often Prescribed Later in the Day

Identifying and limiting the underlying contributing factors to unnecessary opioid prescriptions may help curb the ongoing opioid crisis. To explore the association between the time of day of primary care appointments and opioid prescribing, researchers queried a large electronic healthcare database for primary care appointments that recorded a new painful diagnosis. Patients with cancer or any opioid prescription within the previous year were excluded. Only established patients with scheduled visits seen on a day with at least 10 appointments on the clinician's schedule were included.

The analysis included roughly 678,000 adult patient visits with 5,600 primary care physicians during 2017. Physicians rarely had more than 21 appointments in …