Opioid prescribing raises concerns

Recently released data from the Health Survey for England 2018 have shown that more than 40% of adults in England have at least one long-term medical condition (NHS Digital, 2019a; The Pharmaceutical Journal, 2019a). However, with many now living with multiple long-term conditions and complex care needs, opioid prescribing is high, and several issues and concerns related to this volume of opioid prescription are being raised.

There appear to be high rates of hospital admissions for drug misuse poisoning in areas with high levels of opioid prescription (Burns, 2019). Although local authority spokespeople claim there is no solid evidence linking these two factors, the picture is a worrying one and the patterns being observed cannot be ignored.

According to new figures from NHS Digital, more than half of all hospital admissions for drug misuse poisoning are related to opioids other than heroin, such as codeine or morphine (NHS Digital, 2019b). In England, 18 053 people were admitted to hospital for poisoning resulting from drug misuse, and the primary diagnosis in 9486 of these cases was poisoning from opioids other than heroin (Burns, 2019).