Postoperative Opioid Prescribing and the Pain Scores on Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems Survey

Discussion | In this study, postoperative opioid prescribing was not correlated with HCAHPS pain measures.The study examined a subset of patients used to generate HCAHPS scores and was limited to a single payer in Michigan.Nonetheless, surgical patients are a key contributor to HCAHPS scores, and opioids account for almost 40% of surgical prescriptions. 4 Given the growing evidence demonstrating postoperative opioid prescriptions exceed patient requirements, 6 these findings suggest reducing opioid prescriptions may not worsen HCAHPS scores and hospital reimbursement in Michigan.Moreover, these results may also inform policy makers in the current decision to remove pain management from determination of hospital payments.