The New York Times reports on the impact of letters physicians received from a county medical examiner saying that a patient prescribed an opioid medication by that physician has died of an overdose. Physicians “reduced their prescribing of opioids by just under 10 percent, compared with doctors who didn’t get a letter,” while another letter that “warned primary care doctors that the federal government had flagged them for prescribing too many antipsychotic medications” to at-risk patients drove prescriptions down “more than 15 percent over two years.” The Times reports that according to recent research published in JAMA Psychiatry, these two successful letters “were pretty aggressive,” came from government sources, “and both suggested a level of government surveillance for overprescribing.”

From the news release of the American Association for Justice.