The Center for Investigative Reporting is now making available for download its local database on prescriptions for four opiates that the VA has been dispensing at a rate three times higher than it was at the turn of the century.
“Prescriptions for four opiates – hydrocodone, oxycodone, methadone and morphine – have surged by 270 percent in the past 12 years, according to data CIR obtained through the Freedom of Information Act,” CIR reported last Fall. “CIR’s analysis for the first time exposes the full scope of that increase, which far outpaced the growth in VA patients and varied dramatically across the nation.”
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