Blowing the whistle on opioid overprescription: Insights from patient feedback on physician rating websites

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Abstract

Overprescription of opioid pain relievers is a known contributor to the growing opioid epidemic. Identification of medical providers that engage in overprescription has proven challenging. We examine the utility of physician rating websites (PRWs) as potential sources of data that may help identify overprescribing practices. We leverage text mining techniques to identify linguistic cues that are associated with known cases of overprescription. We find that patients flag potentially problematic medical providers in their reviews and suggest that intervention by authorities is warranted. Our study contributes to the growing body of literature on medical infoveillance by identifying patients' appeals to regulatory authorities as an important type of social signal for regulatory monitoring.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 54th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS 2021
EditorsTung X. Bui
PublisherIEEE Computer Society
Pages3944-3953
Number of pages10
ISBN (Electronic)9780998133140
StatePublished - 2021
Event54th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS 2021 - Virtual, Online
Duration: 4 Jan 20218 Jan 2021

Publication series

NameProceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Volume2020-January
ISSN (Print)1530-1605

Conference

Conference54th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS 2021
CityVirtual, Online
Period4/01/218/01/21

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