Controlled substance prescribing trends and physician and pharmacy utilization patterns: epidemiological analysis of the Maine Prescription Monitoring Program from 2006 to 2010

The Maine Prescription Monitoring Program (PMP) was created to prevent prescription drug misuse and diversion. The PMP collects data for all Schedule II, III and IV prescriptions dispensed by pharmacies licensed in Maine. This article presents a retrospective analysis of the PMP for prescribing trends and utilization patterns from state fiscal year 2006 to 2010. The sample included 11,542,850 Schedule prescriptions for 1,024,649 unduplicated patients in a 5-year database of the PMP. The number of controlled prescriptions steadily increased from 2.05 million in 2006 to 2.51 million in 2010. Opioid analgesics and stimulants were found to be the most commonly prescribed and fastest growing scheduled drug categories, respectively. Most individuals (82.9%) accessed their controlled drugs from one to two prescribers and pharmacies. Patients who utilized five prescribers and more used a greater number of pharmacies than those who utilized less than five prescribers (p < 0.001). The dramatic increase in the numbe...