OxyContin (Oxycodone) prescription usage in Nassau County

I’m writing to inform you and your membership of the increasingly alarming statistics concerning OxyContin (Oxycodone) prescription usage in Nassau County over the past 24 months.

While we have seen a 21% increase in Nassau County Medicaid enrollment for the years 2008-2010, during that time we have also seen a corresponding 580% increase in OxyContin Prescriptions filled during the same period of time, and an 800% increase specifically for  80 mg OxyContin tablets.

Nassau County Medicaid expenditures for OxyContin has doubled each year since 2007, with $1.4 million to date and projected expenditures of over $2 million in 2010.

Nassau County Department of Social Services has initiated a number of efforts to stem the tide of this rising prescription drug usage. Our Medicaid Investigative Unit’s collaborative efforts with the NYS Office of the Medicaid Inspector General (OMIG) and the Nassau County District Attorney’s office have resulted in multiple consumer and provider arrests over the last 3 years for forging or selling OxyContin and other Medicaid narcotics drugs.

We have initiated a Prescription Drug Fraud Outreach to every pharmacy in Nassau County including establishment of a tip hotline (516-227-7813) for suspicious prescriptions.

We also recommend certain recipients to the OMIG’s “Restricted Recipient Program” which limits a recipient to one doctor, one pharmacist and one hospital, so that their prescription drug usage can be more closely monitored.  The OMIG receives and approves the recommendations and then sends them back to the county to implement the restrictions.  Each recipient is typically restricted for 24 month periods and will result in $150k in cost avoidance for Nassau County.

Consumer and medical education are also vital in stemming the tide of prescription drug misuse, especially OxyContin. The Nassau County Department of Mental Health, Chemical Dependency and Developmental Disability Services does provide speakers for public education forums, as does the Long Island Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependency (LICADD).

We appreciate that your membership will continue to support our efforts to closely monitor the inappropriate usage of prescription drugs.

If there is any further information we may provide, please feel free to contact me at 516 227 7403, ext. 5

Sincerely,

John E. Imhof, PhD

Commissioner

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 29th, 2010 at 10:29 am and is filed under HEALTH DEPARTMENT UPDATES. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.