Show HN All US doctors ordered by their opioid prescription count

OK, so am I reading this chart correctly? The top guy issues over 21,000 new opioid prescriptions per year. Not pills, but new, and presumably refill, prescriptions. So that's about 58 prescriptions per day of the year or 84 prescriptions signed per work day. Which is 10.5 per hour. So he spends on average 6 minutes evaluating each case before deciding a new or continuing opioid script is an appropriate treatment.

Is that unexpected? Seems like it makes sense that doctors who specialize in pain management would make up a huge share of painkiller prescriptions. And oncologists make up a huge share of chemo prescriptions, etc. etc.

well, yeah.

There are doctors who, for example, treat your kidneys. They never need to prescribe opioids.

There are doctors who perform surgeries, and prescribe a week of pain killers for recovery.

There are doctors who manage chronic pain. (Often anesthesiologists by specialty, hence that list is all pain management specialists and anesthesiologists.)

How is this surprising? Frankly, if the numbers are accurate (5% prescribe 60%), I'm tempted to think it's not concentrated enough-- sounds like docs of type 1 and 2 should knock it off.

But, what is this number "opioid prescriptions?" Is a script for 1 week of meds a 1:1 unit with a script for a month or 3 months? If you're using medicaid/medicare/insurance payer data, then probably, meaning these numbers do not reliably proxy amount of drugs or number of people receiving them.

By all means, we need to pay attention to the problems with opioids. But context-free clickbait numbers are a really bad place to start.

Astonishingly, nearly every member on this list rates at between 10K and 20K claims a piece, multiplied by nearly 9,000 individual prescribing doctors.

So, a large city, and within that city, nine thousand sold-out stadiums, where attendants hold tickets to the prescription opioid show, and at least one doctor from this list is on stage.

Unfortunately, we don't have volume per claim, which is probably sensitive and confidential patient information on some level.

  EDIT: HN's patented "*hug of death*" is killing this site already...

Gee whiz, you mean pain management doctors, surgeons, oncologists, and anesthesiologists are prescribing pain killers? Wow what a shocker!

This is stupid, and irrelevant.

If you're unfortunate enough to need surgery, have a painful injury, suffer from chronic pain or a severe pain condition, you should just 'deal' with it, right? The politicians, internet commenters, and media know better than your specialized doctor anyway, right?

I'd love to see an analysis that finds a good way to try and discover inappropriate prescriptions. Doctors deserve some benefit-of-the-doubt for this stuff because these are legal medications that treat common symptoms. What is the most useful way to discover when a doctor is making too many prescriptions or not screening their patients for appropriateness of prescription?

The top doctor on the list prescribes 20% more opioids than the next highest, and these are his specialties:

* Counseling

* Pastoral Counseling

The stigma of opioids is going to painful for patients. My wisdom teeth were removed, and my surgeon did not want to prescribe any. I was in pain for a couple days before I screamed at them and something that worked. It was a very unpleasant experience.

This seems quite close to doxxing in my opinion. Flagged.

Edit: If there's a goal other than shaming these doctors and making it easy for people to harass them, please let me know , and I'll gladly remove my flag.