
The U.K.’s government said Wednesday that the U.N. estimates that opioid prescriptions are costing its health care system billions of pounds a year.
U.S.-based Medscape, the research firm that conducted the research, said in a press release that “nearly $1 trillion in revenue” has been lost since 2015 because of the overdose crisis, adding that the average U.A.E. physician lost nearly $1,000 in income per year.
The government report says that opioid abuse has resulted in an increase in the number of opioid-related deaths in the U, which was not previously recognized.
It said that in 2017, 6.2 million Americans died from an opioid overdose, compared to 2.7 million in 2016.
The data, which includes deaths attributed to fentanyl, oxycodone, hydrocodone, and other opioids, was gathered from Medscape’s Annual Medical Use and Cost Survey (AMIUS).
The AMAUS was conducted in 2016 by the University of Michigan.
“While we acknowledge that our estimates are rough, we believe that our findings will provide a clearer picture of the cost of prescribing opioids,” Dr. Jonathan Adler, a physician assistant at the University Medical Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan, said Wednesday.
In 2016, the AMAUS found that opioid prescription rates were at an all-time high.
In 2018, the opioid rate surpassed the number who died from a heart attack in the same year.
The annual average cost of opioids was about $14,400 for the typical U.G.A.-employed physician, according to the AMA.
Dr. William Hahn, a doctor at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, said the study could lead to better guidelines for prescribing opioids.
“The AMAUS data is certainly an interesting and important piece of information for health care providers, but it’s not the only data to look at,” he said.
“The data is the only thing that’s going to tell us what’s causing this increase in overdoses.
It’s not something we can simply look at the data and say ‘We need to change prescriptions.'””
If we really want to help people get the treatment they need and save lives, we need to have a real and strong response to the crisis, and we can’t just turn to data,” he added.
The U.B.E.’s report was based on data from the AMAU’s 2017 survey.
It also used data from other U.E.-based studies, such as the UMA-Spirits study, which surveyed physicians across the country.
It said the AMA survey did not include all U.U.A.’s practices, and the UMI-Ships survey did, however.