On October 15, the CDC released a report that recommended that Delaware and seven other states, take action to curb overprescribing of opioid drugs to address the high rates of addiction and overdose.
Like the other states in the report, most of these prescriptions in Delaware are going to women and middle-aged individuals. But compared to other states, Delaware had the highest rate of prescribed Oxycodone per capita. The study also noted that it couldn’t explain why some types of opioids are prescribed more than others.
The CDC indicated that most of these prescriptions are written by a small minority of medical professionals. The top one percent of these prescribers wrote one in four opioid prescriptions in Delaware, compared to one in eight in Maine.
David Mangler, Director of the Delaware Division of Professional Regulation, says the state has been attempting to address this by enrolling doctors into a program that requires them to document what they prescribe their patients. Doing this helps reveal prescribing patterns among doctors and allows the state to, as Mangler said, “target the education on the small percentage [of prescribers who are] prescribing a large percentage of the high doses."
Along with having one of the highest overdose and opioid addiction rates in the country, Delaware is ranked number one for prescribing high-dose opiates.
