Feb. 12, 2023 – As health economists, we separately participated in two recent studies that showed the payoffs from straightforward and inexpensive mailings.
In one, researchers followed up on a trial in San Diego County looking at 809 clinicians who had prescribed opioids to 166 people who, unknown to the doctors, had fatally overdosed. Half of the prescribers were randomly selected to receive a personal letter from the county’s chief deputy medical examiner notifying them that one of their patients died from an overdose. The letter also provided information about safer prescribing. The other half did not receive a letter and were used as a control group.
The initial study found that in the three months after receiving the letter, opioid prescribing decreased by nearly 10 percent compared to the control group. The recent follow-up study found that after one year, those who received the letter wrote 7 percent fewer prescriptions than clinicians who hadn’t received the notification, showing that the letter had long-term effects on prescribing behavior.
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