Health Quality Ontario report sheds new light on opioid prescriptions

Despite our country’s opioid crisis, more and more Ontarians are getting prescriptions for the powerful painkillers.

A new Health Quality Ontario report says more than 9-million opioid prescriptions were filled in the 2015/16 fiscal year, an increase of 450-thousand over the same period three years earlier.

And of those 9-million prescriptions in Ontario, almost 1.3-million of them came from the Hamilton-Niagara-Haldimand-Brant Local Health Integration Network, which includes Burlington.

That amounts to 90 opioid prescriptions per 100 people, and increase of 7 per cent from two years ago.

Health Quality Ontario CEO, Dr. Joshua Tepper, told CHML’s Bill Kelly Show, the report is aimed at highlighting the concerns about opiods, not demonizing the doctors who prescribe them.

The report says one-third of people 18 and younger are getting ongoing prescriptions, while 80 per cent of people aged 45 to 64 are also getting repeat prescriptions.

That ratio widens even more for people 65 and older.