Table 2.

Associations between opioid-related payments and physician-Medicare beneficiary aggregate prescribing of both ≥ 50 and ≥ 90 MME/day, overall and stratified by physician type and specialty group, August 2013–December 2015

	Odds ratio (95% CI)
	≥ 50 MME/day	≥ 90 MME/day
All physicians	1.14 (1.12–1.15)	1.27 (1.25–1.30)
By physician category
Family/general practice, internal medicine	1.14 (1.12–1.16)	1.31 (1.28–1.33)
Emergency medicine	1.28 (1.08–1.50)	4.00 (3.07–5.20)
Pain medicine, anesthesia, psychiatry, neurology	1.71 (1.61–1.81)	1.57 (1.48–1.67)
Physical, neuromusculoskeletal and sports medicine	1.38 (1.29–1.47)	1.53 (1.42–1.66)
Surgical specialties	1.05 (1.03–1.08)	1.69 (1.63–1.76)
Dentists	1.55 (1.26–1.91)	1.65 (1.11–2.47)
Chiropractors	0.91 (0.25–3.33)	1.22 (0.27–5.45)
All other specialties	1.49 (1.38–1.61)	1.97 (1.72–2.26)

Logistic regression models were adjusted for prescriber specialty, patient age, sex, race, Medicare copay status, and fee-for-service status and for clinical comorbidity using the Hierarchical Condition Category risk score. The 95% confidence intervals account for clustering among prescribers