Opioid Prescriptions to Urban and Rural Patients by Oral-maxillofacial Surgeons: A Review of Massachusetts Prescription Monitoring Program Data 2011-2021

Abstract

Massachusetts has implemented many policies and initiatives in the last decade to combat the opioid epidemic, which remains a major public health crisis. Oral and maxillofacial surgeons are frequent prescribers of narcotic analgesics to manage postoperative pain. To this end, it remains unclear if analgesic management patterns differ for urban versus rural oral and maxillofacial surgeons, given potential differences in access to and delivery of care. While recent studies have found minimal urban-rural difference in opioid prescriptions to the Medicare population, this has yet to be explored among the general population.