A report newly issued by the AMA shows that opioid prescribing nationwide has dropped 44.4% in the past decade and fell nearly 7% from 2019 to 2020. At the same time, the country is facing a worsening epidemic of drug-related overdoses and deaths.

Overdoses and deaths are spiking even as physicians and other clinicians have greatly increased the use of prescription drug-monitoring programs (PDMPs)—more than 910 million times in 2020, according to the AMA’s “2021 Overdose Epidemic Report” (PDF). That’s up 21% from the 750 million times that PDMPs were used in 2019 by doctors and others.

My latest for the AMA. The whole shebang.