Elizabeth Amirault had never heard of a Narx Score. But she said she learned last year the tool had been used to track her medication use.
During an August 2022 visit to a hospital in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Amirault told a nurse practitioner she was in severe pain, she said. She received a puzzling response.
“Your Narx Score is so high, I can’t give you any narcotics,” she recalled the man saying, as she waited for an MRI before a hip replacement.
Tools like Narx Scores are used to help medical providers review controlled substance prescriptions. They influence, and can limit, the prescribing of painkillers, similar to a credit score influencing the terms of a loan. Narx Scores and an algorithm-generated overdose risk rating are produced by health care technology company Bamboo Health (formerly Appriss Health) in its NarxCare platform.
Such systems are designed to fight the nation’s opioid epidemic, which has led to an alarming number of overdose deaths. The platforms draw on data about prescriptions for controlled substances that states collect to identify patterns of potential problems involving patients and physicians. State and federal health agencies, law enforcement officials, and health care providers have enlisted these tools, but the mechanics behind the formulas used are generally not shared with the public.
Artificial intelligence is working its way into more parts of American life. As AI spreads within the health care landscape, it brings familiar concerns of bias and accuracy and whether government regulation can keep up with rapidly advancing technology.
The use of systems to analyze opioid-prescribing data has sparked questions over whether they have undergone enough independent testing outside of the companies that developed them,…
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