Effect of State Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs on Opioid Prescribing

Yuhua Bao’s pilot grant examined the impact of Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP) implementation on opioid prescribing in ambulatory care settings using National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS) and the Medicaid Drug Utilization Data (MDUD). Bao and colleagues studied trends in prescribing opiates in ambulatory settings across states pre-/post-implementation of PDMPs. The investigators also examined the budget impact of PDMP policies on Medicaid spending for buprenorphine and naltrexone treatments as an indicator of change in medication-assisted treatment for opioid dependence.

Yuhua Bao is health economist and an associate professor of population health sciences at Weill Cornell Medicine. She specializes in the design and conduct of quantitative health services research. Recently, she gained new experience with qualitative research methods and have been developing research projects that adopt a mixed-methods approach.