Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Opioid Overdose Prevention

Description:

Opioid prescription rates per 100 persons, reported by the CDC, are calculated using population estimates from the Population Estimates Program, U.S. Census Bureau.

Opioid prescriptions, including buprenorphine formulations commonly prescribed for treating pain (Belbuca and Butrans), codeine, fentanyl, hydrocodone, hydromorphone, methadone, morphine, oxycodone, oxymorphone, propoxyphene, tapentadol, and tramadol, were identified using National Drug Codes.Cough and cold formulations containing opioids and buprenorphine, an opioid partial agonist used for treatment of opioid use disorder as well as for pain, are not included. In addition, methadone dispensed through methadone treatment programs is not included.

Source for all CDC prescription dispensing data comes from IQVIA Xponent (previously know as QuintilesIMS).
IQVIA Xponent is based on a sample of approximately 56,500 retail (non-hospital) pharmacies, which dispense nearly 93% of all retail prescriptions in the United States. For this database, a prescription is a new or refilled prescription dispensed at a retail pharmacy in the sample and paid for by commercial insurance, Medicaid, Medicare, cash or its equivalent, and other third-party coverage. This database does not include mail-order prescriptions. Geographic location is based on the location of the prescriber. For the calculation of dispensing rates, numerators are the projected total number of prescriptions dispensed annually at the state, county, or national level. Annual resident population denominators were obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau.

After a steady increase in overall opioid prescribing rates from 2006, total opioid prescriptions peaked in 2012 at 255 million and a rate of 81.3 prescriptions per 100 people. The rate does not represent the percent of the population receiving opioid prescriptions. Since an individual may receive multiple prescriptions in a year, many counties have rates that are greater than 100 prescriptions per 100 persons.

Counties displayed as having insufficient data may indicate counties with no retail pharmacies, counties where no retail pharmacies were sampled, or counties where the prescription volume was erroneously attributed to an adjacent, more populous county according to the sampling rules used.

This data differs from the data shown in the July 2017 issue of CDC Vital Signs, which featured different facets of opioid prescribing from 2006 to 2015. For more information visit https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/opioids/index.html.