This data analysis accompanies the story "Vermont Leaders Make a Case for Opiate Prescription Data 'Transparency'", published in Seven Days on June 28, 2017.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) releases data on the prescribing habits of medical practitioners for their Medicare Part D patients. As of May 2017, datasets for 2013, 2014 and 2015 are available. CMS also releases an overview document with information on data sources and methodology.

To examine how we cleaned and shaped the data, take a look at the medicare-prescription-data-prep.ipynb. For the data examination and analysis, check out medicare-prescription-analysis.ipynb. All data used for the analysis is contained in the data file.