"Cookbook medicine": Exploring the impact of opioid prescribing limits legislation on clinical practice and patient experiences.

Opioid dependence and overdose are serious public health concerns. States have responded by enacting legislation regulating opioid-prescribing practices. Through in-depth interviews with clinicians, state officials, and organizational stakeholders, this paper examines opioid prescribing limits legislation (PLL) in North Carolina and how it impacts clinical practice.

Implementation of mandatory opioid prescribing limits in North Carolina: healthcare administrator and prescriber perspectives.

Background: Recent increases in state laws to reduce opioid prescribing have demonstrated a need to understand how they are interpreted and implemented in healthcare systems. The purpose of this study was to explore the systems, strategies, and resources that hospital administrators and prescribers used to implement the 2017 North Carolina Strengthen Opioid Prevention (STOP) Act opioid prescribing limits, which limited initial prescriptions to a five (for acute) or seven (for post-surgical) days' supply.

Methods: We interviewed 14 hospital administrators and 38 prescribers with degrees in medicine, nursing, pharmacy, business administration and public health working across North Carolina.