{"doi":"10.1093/haschl/qxad068","title":"Massachusetts’ opioid limit law associated with a reduction in postoperative opioid duration among orthopedic patients","abstract":"<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title>\n               <jats:p>Postoperative orthopedic patients are a high-risk group for receiving long-duration, large-dosage opioid prescriptions. Rigorous evaluation of state opioid duration limit laws, enacted throughout the country in response to the opioid overdose epidemic, is lacking among this high-risk group. We took advantage of Massachusetts’ early implementation of a 2016 7-day-limit law that occurred before other statewide or plan-wide policies took effect and used commercial insurance claims from 2014–2017 to study its association with postoperative opioid prescriptions greater than 7 days’ duration among Massachusetts orthopedic patients relative to a New Hampshire control group. Our sample included 14 097 commercially insured, opioid-naive adults aged 18 years and older undergoing elective orthopedic procedures. We found that the Massachusetts 7-day limit was associated with an immediate 4.23 percentage point absolute reduction (95% CI, 8.12 to 0.33 percentage points) and a 33.27% relative reduction (95% CI, 55.36% to 11.19%) in the percentage of initial fills greater than 7 days in the Massachusetts relative to the control group. Seven-day-limit laws may be an important state-level tool to mitigate longer duration prescribing to high-risk postoperative populations.</jats:p>","journal":"Health Affairs Scholar","year":2023,"id":652394,"datarank":0.16479184330021646,"base_score":1.0986122886681096,"endowment":1.0986122886681096,"self_citation_contribution":0.16479184330021646,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.16479184330021646,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":2,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":null,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":false,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":null,"fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1484779,"name":"Fang Zhang","orcid":"0000-0002-8282-8738","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1701799,"name":"Edward Rosen","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":474861,"name":"Brian C. Goh","orcid":"0000-0001-7224-2613","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1701800,"name":"Nicolas K Trad","orcid":"0000-0001-7260-176X","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1701801,"name":"James Franklin Wharam","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1155936,"name":"Hefei Wen","orcid":"0009-0007-0265-1690","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1155935,"name":"Bryant Shuey","orcid":"0000-0002-4846-5742","position":0,"is_corresponding":false}],"reference_count":0,"raw_metadata":{"has_enrichment":true,"resolved":true,"title":"Massachusetts’ opioid limit law associated with a reduction in postoperative opioid duration among orthopedic patients","abstract":"<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title>\n               <jats:p>Postoperative orthopedic patients are a high-risk group for receiving long-duration, large-dosage opioid prescriptions. Rigorous evaluation of state opioid duration limit laws, enacted throughout the country in response to the opioid overdose epidemic, is lacking among this high-risk group. We took advantage of Massachusetts’ early implementation of a 2016 7-day-limit law that occurred before other statewide or plan-wide policies took effect and used commercial insurance claims from 2014–2017 to study its association with postoperative opioid prescriptions greater than 7 days’ duration among Massachusetts orthopedic patients relative to a New Hampshire control group. Our sample included 14 097 commercially insured, opioid-naive adults aged 18 years and older undergoing elective orthopedic procedures. We found that the Massachusetts 7-day limit was associated with an immediate 4.23 percentage point absolute reduction (95% CI, 8.12 to 0.33 percentage points) and a 33.27% relative reduction (95% CI, 55.36% to 11.19%) in the percentage of initial fills greater than 7 days in the Massachusetts relative to the control group. Seven-day-limit laws may be an important state-level tool to mitigate longer duration prescribing to high-risk postoperative populations.</jats:p>","is_dataset_classified":null,"base_score":1.0986122886681096,"endowment":1.0986122886681096,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"views":0,"has_version_chain":false,"is_dataset":false,"is_oa":false,"pmid":"38756368","pmcid":"PMC10986237","openalex_id":"https://openalex.org/W4389295821","authors":[],"funders":[],"total_grants":0,"fwci":0.4788,"citation_percentile":0.67589362,"influential_citations":0,"citation_trend":[{"year":2025,"count":1},{"year":2026,"count":1}],"oa_status":"gold","license":"cc-by-nc","oa_locations":[{"url":"https://academic.oup.com/healthaffairsscholar/advance-article-pdf/doi/10.1093/haschl/qxad068/53979746/qxad068.pdf","host_type":"journal"},{"url":"https://academic.oup.com/healthaffairsscholar/advance-article-pdf/doi/10.1093/haschl/qxad068/53979746/qxad068.pdf","host_type":"publisher"},{"url":"https://academic.oup.com/healthaffairsscholar/article-pdf/1/6/qxad068/54679414/qxad068.pdf","host_type":"publisher"},{"url":"https://doi.org/10.1093/haschl/qxad068","host_type":"journal"},{"url":"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38756368","host_type":"repository"},{"url":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/10986237","host_type":"repository"},{"url":"https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC10986237","host_type":"Europe_PMC"},{"url":"https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC10986237?pdf=render","host_type":"Europe_PMC"}],"fields_of_study":["Opioid Use Disorder Treatment","Anesthesia and Pain Management","Pain Management and Opioid Use"],"mesh_terms":[],"keywords":["Opioid","Duration (music)","Orthopedic surgery","Limit (mathematics)","Medicine","Reduction (mathematics)","Anesthesia","Law","Internal medicine","Surgery","Mathematics","Political science","Physics","Pharmacoepidemiology","Post-operative Opioid Prescribing","Opioid Prescribing Limit Law","Interrupted Times Series"],"sdg_mappings":[{"sdg_number":0,"sdg_label":"Good health and well-being"}],"linked_datasets":[],"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"database_accessions":[],"source":"live","citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-08-10T13:29:42.293381Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}