Reducing the default number for postoperative opioids in an EMR can help lower the number of opioids prescribed to patients after surgery, according to a new study published in JAMA Surgery.
For the study, lead author Alexander Chiu, MD, resident assistant at Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Conn., compared postsurgical opioid prescribing patterns for 1,447 procedures before changing the EMR default and 1,463 procedures after the default was lowered from 30 pills to 12 pills.
Researchers found lowering the default setting resulted in a more than 15 percent decrease in opioids prescribed across the entire health system. The median number of opioid pills prescribed per prescription also dropped from 30 pills to 20.
"Lowering the default number of opioid pills prescribed in an EMR system is a simple, effective, cheap, and potentially scalable intervention to change prescriber behavior and decrease the amount of opioid medication prescribed after procedures," the researchers concluded.
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