Objectives: Doctor/pharmacy shopping, the practice of seeking prescriptions from multiple healthcare sources without their coordination, may be a measure of prescription medicine abuse. This cross-sectional study examined the relationship between a claims-based doctor/pharmacy shopping definition and medical record documented behaviors suggestive of misuse, diversion, abuse and/or addiction.
Methods: Patients with ≥2 opioid dispensings starting in 2012 in a US administrative claims database were grouped into doctor/pharmacy shopping categories by number of providers and pharmacies used over 18 months: no shopping, minimal shopping, moderate shopping and severe shopping. Medical charts of opioid prescribers were reviewed to identify behaviors suggestive of misuse, diversion, abuse and/or addiction.
Results: Among 581,940 opioid users, 78% were classified as no shopping, 11% minimal shopping, 8% moderate shopping and 3% severe shopping. Almost 40% of severe shopping patients had no medical record documented behaviors (positive predictive value: 24.3%). Compared with no shopping, the odds ratio [OR] of ≥3 behaviors was 1.70 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.50-5.78) for minimal shopping, 1.81 (95% CI 0.54-6.03) for moderate shopping, and 8.93 (95% CI 3.12-25.54) for severe shopping.
Conclusions: Claims-identified severe doctor/pharmacy shopping was strongly associated with behaviors suggestive of misuse, diversion, abuse and/or addiction, but the proportion of medical records documenting these was low.
Keywords: abuse; addiction; doctor/pharmacy shopping; misuse; opioid.