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But one of the interesting
things that we looked at, and even the Health Plan are interested in saving money on these
agents for treating back pain. One of the things they’ve been concerned about is
narcotic use in LBP, obviously because there’s been some abuse and they are trying to
cut down on that. One of the things we looked at was is that of all the narcotics that are
prescribed in UPMC Health Plan what percentage goes in LBP and it is almost tops and
cancer patients who are the ones you might expect to be getting the narcotics account for
21%. And I think I can tell you that if we were looking at Medicaid data – some of you
were looking surprised at these numbers – if you were looking at Medicaid data, the
percent that gets narcotics who are on Medicaid is much, much, much higher. |