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Examining Gender Differences in Opioid, Benzodiazepine, and Antibiotic Prescribing

Hamamsy, T.; Tamang, S.; Lembke, A.

2019-08-12 health informatics
10.1101/19003533 medRxiv
Show abstract

While gender differences have been explored across several areas of medicine, our study is the first to present a systematic comparison of drug prescribing behavior of male and female providers, including opioid, benzodiazepine, and antibiotic prescribing. Our work is of particular relevance to the current opioid crisis and other iatrogenic harms related to injudicious prescribing. Our objective is to explore prescribing differences between male and female providers across medical specialties and for different prescription drug categories in Medicare Part D. To this end, we performed a descriptive, retrospective study of 1.13 million medical providers who made drug claims to Medicare Part D in 2016, analyzing by gender, specialty, and drug category. We found that male providers across diverse specialties prescribe significantly more medications, including opioids, benzodiazepines, and antibiotics than female providers by volume, cost, and per patient. These observed gender differences in prescribing, while agnostic to the quality of care provided, nonetheless inform the design of prevention strategies that seek to reduce iatrogenic harms related to prescribing.

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