Why is This Important?
UAMS is the state’s only academic medical center and has the largest residency training program in emergency medicine. The UAMS emergency department (ED) sees more than 65,000 patients per year, with an average 11,000 patients per year who present for pain. Of these, 23.2% are administered opioids in the ED, and if prescribed opioids at discharge, receive a mean prescription duration of 36 days with some as long as 76 days. Fewer than 1% receiving opioid prescriptions also received take-home naloxone at the same time.
Offering alternatives to opioids will not only help current UAMS patients, but will also have a years-long effect, as approximately 45% of EM residents remain in Arkansas after graduation and most Arkansas ED physicians are UAMS trained.
Outside the UAMS ED, Arkansas has had the second-highest opioid prescribing rate in the nation since the early 2010s.
In 2016, Arkansas physicians prescribed 114.6 opioid prescriptions per 100 people; all but nine of 75 counties had overall opioid prescribing rates higher than the 2016 national average of 66.5/100 persons. Fortunately, the rate of opioid prescribing in Arkansas declined to 75.8 per 100 persons by 2020, but this rate is still 75% higher than the national average of 43.3 prescriptions per 100 persons.