Opioid prescriptions rise in Ontario: report

A new report says nearly two million people in Ontario — or 14 per cent of the province’s population — fill prescriptions for opioids every year.

The report by Health Quality Ontario says more than 9 million prescriptions were filled between April 1, 2015 and March 31, 2016, up by nearly 450,000 prescriptions from three years earlier.

“Addiction to opioids is a critically urgent health problem in our province, and nationally,” says Joshua Tepper, Health Quality Ontario’s President and CEO in a press release Wednesday. “We need to prescribe opioids more safely than we do now, and we also need to provide better access and higher-quality care for people who have an opioid addiction.”

The number of prescriptions varied by region. Hamilton was well above the provincial average with 90 prescriptions filled per 100 people in the Hamilton, Niagara, Haldimand, Brant local Health Integration Network during the 5015/2016 fiscal year.

The report suggests that patients continued to be given the potent narcotics despite efforts to curtail what’s been called a national epidemic of overuse.

To see the full report, click here.