PQA Opioid Measures and Evaluations

Lisa Hines, PharmD, vice president of Measurement and Operations at Pharmacy Quality Alliance (PQA), discusses PQA's new opioid measures and what they evaluate during the PQA Annual Meeting in Baltimore, MD.

Lisa Hines, PharmD: So, our 3 new measures look at opioid prescribing. So, these are new starts, and it looks at long duration greater than 7 day’s supply, or a high dose, or it looks at initial use of long-acting or extended release opioid. And these are for high plans using administrative claims data. So, these prescribing patterns are important, because they’re correlated with increased risk of downstream, chronic opioid use which can contribute to misuse, and even overdose. So, we consider them a really important way at preventing downstream, long-term use.