Association of Lowering Default Pill Counts in Electronic Medical Record Systems With Postoperative Opioid Prescribing

Importance: Reliance on prescription opioids for postprocedural analgesia has contributed to the opioid epidemic. With the implementation of electronic medical record (EMR) systems, there has been increasing use of computerized order entry systems for medication prescriptions, which is now more common than handwritten prescriptions. The EMR can autopopulate a default number of pills prescribed, and 1 potential method to alter prescriber behavior is to change the default number presented via the EMR system. Objective: To investigate the association of lowering the default number of pills presented when prescribing opioids in an EMR system with the amount of opioid prescribed after procedures. Design, Setting, and Participants: A prepost intervention study was conducted to compare postprocedural prescribing patterns during the 3 months before the default change (February 18 to May 17, 2017) with the 3 months after the default change (May 18 to August 18, 2017). The setting was a multihospital health care system that uses Epic EMR (Hyperspace 2015 IU2; Epic Systems Corporation). Participants were all patients in the study period undergoing 1 of the 10 most common operations and discharged by postoperative day 1. Intervention: The default number of opioid pills autopopulated in the EMR when prescribing discharge analgesia was lowered from 30 to 12. Main Outcomes and Measures: Linear regression estimating the change in the median number of opioid pills and the total dose of opioid prescribed was performed. Opioid doses were converted into morphine milligram equivalents (MME) for comparison. The frequency of patients requiring analgesic prescription refills was also evaluated. Results: There were 1447 procedures (mean SD age, 54.4 17.3 years; 66.9% female) before the default change and 1463 procedures (mean SD age, 54.5 16.4 years; 67.0% female) after the default change. After the default change, the median number of opioid pills prescribed decreased from 30 (interquartile range, 15-30) to 20 (interquartile range, 12-30) per prescription (P < .001). The percentage of prescriptions written for 30 pills decreased from 39.7% (554 of 1397) before the default change to 12.9% (183 of 1420) after the default change (P < .001), and the percentage of prescriptions written for 12 pills increased from 2.1% (29 of 1397) before the default change to 24.6% (349 of 1420) after the default change (P < .001). Regression analysis demonstrated a decrease of 5.22 (95% CI, -6.12 to -4.32) opioid pills per prescription after the default change, for a total decrease of 34.41 (95% CI, -41.36 to -27.47) MME per prescription. There was no statistical difference in opioid refill rates (3.0% 4 of 135 before the default change vs 1.5% 2 of 135 after the default change, P = .41). Conclusions and Relevance: Lowering the default number of opioid pills prescribed in an EMR system is a simple, effective, cheap, and potentially scalable intervention to change prescriber behavior and decrease the amount of opioid medication prescribed after procedures.