ArticleApplied health economics and health policy2014
Estimating the costs of opioid abuse and dependence from an employer perspective: a retrospective analysis using administrative claims data.
Article in Applied health economics and health policy, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 30 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
30 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 64 citations in OpenAlex.
- Evidence-based framework for identifying opioid use disorder in administrative data: A systematic review and methodological development study.Pain medicine (Malden, Mass.) · 2026Pooled it
- Economic Evaluations of Pharmacologic Treatment for Opioid Use Disorder: A Systematic Literature Review.Value in health : the journal of the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research · 2021Pooled it
- The Economic Burden of Abuse of Prescription Opioids: A Systematic Literature Review from 2012 to 2017.Applied health economics and health policy · 2018Pooled it
- Abuse Potential Study of ALO-02 (Extended-Release Oxycodone Surrounding Sequestered Naltrexone) Compared with Immediate-Release Oxycodone Administered Orally to Nondependent Recreational Opioid Users.Pain medicine (Malden, Mass.) · 2017Trial
- The rising tide of opioid use disorder: analyzing 30 years of epidemiological trends and socioeconomic factors in the U.S.Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archives of pharmacology · 2026Article
- Productivity Losses From Substance Use Disorder in the U.S. in 2023.American journal of preventive medicine · 2026Article
- Healthcare utilization trends among patients with opioid use disorder in U.S. Hospitals: an analysis of length of stay, total charges, and costs, 2005-2020.BMC health services research · 2025Article
- Real-world healthcare utilization and costs of peripheral nerve stimulation with a micro-IPG system.Pain management · 2025Observational
- Identifying patients with opioid use disorder using International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes: Challenges and opportunities.Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2024Observational
- Individualized Prospective Prediction of Opioid Use Disorder.Canadian journal of psychiatry. Revue canadienne de psychiatrie · 2023Article
- Sick Leave and Costs in Active Workers with Chronic Osteoarthritis Pain in Spain: Outcomes of the OPIOIDS Real World Study.Open access rheumatology : research and reviews · 2022Article
- Article
- A harm reduction model to assess the impact of new treatments for pain over standard of care among patients with osteoarthritis.Journal of managed care & specialty pharmacy · 2021Article
- The Financial Burden of Opioid-Related Abuse among Surgical and Non-Surgical Patients in Florida: A Longitudinal Study.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Article
- Fluctuations in barriers to medication treatment for opioid use disorder prescribing over the course of a one-year external facilitation intervention.Addiction science & clinical practice · 2021Article
- Increased health care costs associated with new persistent opioid use after major surgery in opioid-naive patients.Journal of managed care & specialty pharmacy · 2021Article
- Early impacts of a multi-faceted implementation strategy to increase use of medication treatments for opioid use disorder in the Veterans Health Administration.Implementation science communications · 2021Article
- Work Environment Factors and Prevention of Opioid-Related Deaths.American journal of public health · 2020Article
- Pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic considerations in developing a response to the opioid epidemic.Expert opinion on drug metabolism & toxicology · 2020Review
- Adverse drug reactions due to opioid analgesic use in New South Wales, Australia: a spatial-temporal analysis.BMC pharmacology & toxicology · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundOpioid abuse and dependence is problematic across many age groups, including the working-age population and their dependents. Little is known, however, about the economic costs of opioid abuse/dependence imposed on employers, who pay for a substantial portion of healthcare costs through their contributions to employer-sponsored health insurance and are also affected by indirect costs such as those due to disability and workplace absenteeism.
objectiveTo provide a comprehensive, current estimate of the economic burden of prescription opioid abuse/dependence to employers.
methodsAdministrative claims from beneficiaries covered by large self-insured companies throughout the USA were used to identify patients, including employees and dependents, who were diagnosed with opioid abuse and/or dependence ('abusers') between 2006 and 2012. Healthcare and work-loss costs for abusers were assessed over a 12-month period and compared with those for patients not diagnosed with abuse ('comparison patients'), using propensity score matching.
results7,658 matched pairs of abusers and comparison patients were analysed. Relative to comparison patients, abusers had significantly higher annual healthcare resource utilization, leading to US$10,627 in per-patient incremental annual healthcare costs. Additionally, abusers had US$1,244 in excess annual work-loss costs. Together, this implies an employer burden for diagnosed abuse of US$1.71 per member per month.
conclusionOpioid abuse/dependence impose a substantial economic burden on employers.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.