This study examines a community pharmacy-based intervention to reduce opioid medication misuse. Despite a recent national decline in opioid prescribing, 10.3 million Americans in 2018 reported misusing a prescribed opioid, and within this population, >36% of those who misused obtained the opioid medication by filling a prescription. The point of medication dispensing, namely, the community pharmacy, is an untapped resource to address prescription opioid misuse-especially when considering the >60,000 pharmacies employing >170,000 pharmacists in the US. This study aims to conduct a fully-powered RCT of the BI-MTM intervention in community pharmacy settings that will accomplish 3 Specific Aims. The first Aim will demonstrate the pharmacist-led BI-MTM intervention is superior to standard medication counseling (SMC) for mitigating opioid medication misuse. This will be accomplished by conducting a powered single-blinded randomized trial to test the efficacy of BI-MTM (n=175) vs. SMC (n=175). Participants will be screened/recruited for eligibility at point of dispensing in 14 community pharmacies in Utah, a high opioid prescribing and opioid-adverse event state. Participants will be assessed at baseline, 2, and 6 months for opioid medication misuse. Participant-level state prescription drug monitoring data will also be linked with patient outcomes to assess objective changes in medication misuse behaviors (e.g., early refills and doctor/pharmacy shopping). The second Aim will identify the pathway by which BI-MTM results in improvements for depression, pain, and subsequently opioid misuse. To accomplish this, a path analysis will assess relationships of BI-MTM: (1) on depression, pain, and misuse, (2) depression on misuse, and (3) pain on misuse. The final Aim will explore latent transitions of baseline to post-intervention misuse classes by intervention group. This will be accomplished by using mixture modeling, specifically multi-group latent transition analysis. The observed misuse indicators will be used to estimate latent class transitions across time, grouping by treatment condition and adjusting for baseline covariates. Completing SA1- 3 advance the understanding of BI-MTM efficacy and set the stage for a national multisite trial.
This study is a randomized controlled trial across 14 community pharmacies to test the efficacy of the Brief Intervention-Medication Therapy Management intervention (BI-MTM). The establishment of the BI-MTM model will result in a major impact for addressing the opioid epidemic, preventing opioid use disorder and overdose, and safeguarding patient health in a novel community-based service setting.