Primary care providers’ influence on opioid use and its adverse consequences

Primary care is the most frequently utilized health service and is the source of nearly half of all opioids prescribed in the United States. This paper studies the impact of exposure to high prescribing primary care providers (PCP) on opioid use, opioid use disorder, and mental health. Using electronic health records, we exploit within-facility quasi-random assignment of providers, who differ in their opioid prescribing tendency, to 650,000 new …