Background: The United States appears to be in the midst of an opioid epidemic. National data indicate a rise in emergency department visits for opioid-related causes over the past decade. This data, while important in helping to explain the magnitude of the epidemic nationally offers only a glimpse of what can be expected to occur locally. The objective of this secondary data analysis was to describe the impact that opioid abuse, adverse events, poisoning, and dependence have on emergency department utilization for individuals who purchased health insurance under the Affordable Care Act in Central Texas from a community-based health maintenance organization.
Methods: Individuals who purchased health insurance from Sendero Health Plans in calendar years 2016, 2017, and 2018 were eligible for participation if they had both an emergency department encounter and an opioid-related ICD-10-CM diagnosis. Eligible individuals were assessed to determine if they were dispensed an opioid agonist or opioid antagonist prescription during the year of their emergency department encounter. Sendero medical claims data for calendar years 2016, 2017, and 2018 were used to calculate both the incidence and ratio of emergency department visits per 100,000-person Sendero member population. Sendero data were compared to available national data estimates.
Results: A total of 55 individuals had an emergency department encounter with a primary or secondary opioid-related diagnosis from January 1, 2016 through December 31, 2018. These 55 individuals had 69 unique emergency department encounters during this time period. The incidence of new claims per 100,000-member Sendero population was 67.1, 64.5, and 62.6 in 2016, 2017, and 2018 respectively. The ratio of unique emergency department encounters per 100,000-member Sendero population was 95.9, 82.6, and 66.5 in 2016, 2017, and 2018 respectively.
Conclusion: Health insurance claims data from a community-based health plan can be used as a source of local information by policy makers and officials as they seek to address the impact of opioid abuse, adverse events, poisoning, and dependence in Central Texas as national data may not represent the local impact of this epidemic.
Keywords: Affordable Care Act; Emergency department encounters; Health maintenance organization; Opioids; Sendero Health Plans.