Table 4.
Regression‐Adjusted Prescribing Measures by Prescriber Specialty, 2006–2012
| Share of Total Filled Prescriptions (%) | Mean Number of Fills per Prescriber | Share Prescribing <60 Days after an Overdose (%) | Distribution of Prescribers in the Top 10% of Fills (%) | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | 2012 | 2006 | 2012 | 2006 | 2012 | 2006 | 2012 | |
| All specialties | 100 | 100 | 13.07 | 14.02 | 0.61 | 0.85 | 100 | 100 |
| Family medicine | 29.20 | 27.09 | 24.03 | 26.28 | 0.83 | 1.23 | 66.06 | 63.88 |
| Internal medicine | 21.23 | 20.37 | 15.91 | 17.16 | 0.73 | 1.07 | 5.91 | 6.31 |
| Surgery | 8.82 | 8.63 | 11.89 | 12.55 | 0.33 | 0.45 | 0.19 | 0.21 |
| Nurse practitionera | 2.55 | 5.55 | 10.03 | 11.08 | 0.60 | 0.77 | – | 0.06 |
| Emergency medicine | 5.09 | 4.93 | 9.52 | 10.52 | 0.69 | 0.90 | – | – |
| Physician assistanta | 2.21 | 4.69 | 8.91 | 9.67 | 0.58 | 0.73 | – | – |
| Dentist | 2.95 | 3.77 | 4.90 | 5.13 | 0.12 | 0.14 | – | – |
| Pain medicine | 1.94 | 2.50 | 103.20 | 120.16 | 6.12 | 9.12 | 2.46 | 2.92 |
| Physical medicine | 1.91 | 2.14 | 26.25 | 29.80 | 2.07 | 3.18 | 5.51 | 6.57 |
| Oncology | 2.02 | 2.10 | 12.59 | 13.42 | 0.40 | 0.52 | 0.15 | 0.23 |
| Anesthesiology | 1.61 | 2.01 | 28.41 | 32.45 | 3.18 | 4.65 | 5.27 | 6.91 |
| Geriatric medicine | 1.88 | 1.69 | 35.26 | 38.20 | 0.95 | 1.59 | 6.43 | 5.71 |
| Rheumatology | 1.85 | 1.62 | 33.77 | 36.39 | 0.75 | 0.97 | 6.41 | 5.63 |
| Psychiatry/neurology | 1.21 | 1.35 | 9.12 | 10.37 | 1.45 | 1.63 | – | – |
| General medicine | 1.19 | 1.05 | 21.15 | 22.88 | 0.94 | 1.51 | 1.57 | 1.56 |
All findings are adjusted at the prescriber level and control for differences by patient age, sex, race, dual eligibility, low‐income status, disability status, ESRD status, end‐of‐life status, various diagnoses, and health status.
The top 15 specialties (as defined by their total share of fills in 2012) are presented in this table. All specialty definitions are defined following the Medicare health care provider taxonomy available here: https://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Provider-Enrollment-and-Certification/MedicareProviderSupEnroll/Downloads/TaxonomyCrosswalk.pdf. Physicians with both a classification and a specialization (e.g., Internal Medicine & Emergency Medicine) are reported by their specialization.
– Indicates that there were either no observations for that specialty or too few to report.
Nurse practitioners and physicians assistants were grouped together by type, regardless of specialization.