Research finds that 31 percent of hospices reported at least one confirmed instance of medication diversion in the past 90 days, and smaller agencies reported much higher rates of diversion.
School of Social Work associate professors John Cagle, PhD, Jodi Frey, PhD, and Paul Sacco, PhD, and PhD student Orrin Ware, MSW, MPH, are among the authors of new research that was published as a Research Letter in the Journal of the American Medical Association, one of the world's leading medical research journals.
“Estimates of Medication Diversion in Hospice” found that 31 percent of hospices reported at least one confirmed instance of medication diversion in the past 90 days; smaller agencies reported much higher rates of diversion per patient compared with medium and large hospices. Diversion rates also were associated with agencies that provide the majority of care at home. Given the challenges of symptom management during hospice care, patients require responsive opioid prescribing. Within the context of the national opioid crisis, medication diversion in hospice is an increasing concern.
Additional co-authors include Mary Lynn McPherson, PharmD (School of Pharmacy), the late Debra Wiegland, PhD (School of Nursing), and Jack Guralnik, PhD (School of Medicine).
As a companion to the Research Letter, Cagle and Ware also are authors of the white paper “15 Recommendations for Preventing Medication Diversion & Misuse in Hospice Care” that has been distributed to the top 15 hospice providers in the country as well as to the nearly 400 agencies that participated in the initial survey.