The Economic Burden of Diagnosed Opioid Abuse Among Commercially Insured Individuals

AbstractThe abuse of prescription opioids imposes a substantial public health and economic burden. Recent research using administrative claims data has substantiated the prevalence and cost of opioid abuse among commercially insured individuals. Although administrative claims data are readily available and have been used to effectively answer research questions about the burden of illness for many different conditions, an important issue is the reliability, replicability, and generalizability of estimates derived from different databases. Therefore, this study sought to assess whether the findings of a recently published study of opioid abuse in a commercial claims database (original analysis) could be replicated in a different commercial claims database. The original analysis, which analyzed the prevalence and excess health care costs of diagnosed opioid abuse in the OptumHealth Reporting and Insights Database, was replicated by applying the same approach to the Truven MarketScan Commercial Claims and En...