Kela letter to high-quantity codeine prescribers (Finland)
In May 2017 the Social Insurance Institution of Finland (Kela) sent a personal letter to every physician who had given a new patient a prescription of at least 100 paracetamol-codeine tablets, asking them to look at their prescribing and start patients on smaller amounts.
- Years
- 2017
- Country
- Finland
- Topic
- Opioids
- Asks people to
- Stop
- Strategy
- Simple instruction
- Channel
- Direct mail
- Audience
- CliniciansFinnish physicians who had prescribed 100+ tablets of paracetamol-codeine to a new patient.
Evidence
Quasi-experimentalPositive
Difference-in-differences on national register data (Ahomaki 2020): the letter cut the average number of tablets bought by new patients by 12.5% and the probability of a first purchase of 100+ tablets by 6 percentage points; effects were larger for consistent high prescribers; no effect on other mild or strong opioids. A later randomized letter study on strong opioids (in the first author's 2025 dissertation) found no significant overall effect.
Sponsor (who paid)
- Social Insurance Institution of Finland (Kela) Foreign government, sender and evaluator
Credits (who made it)
Not recorded yet.
Sources
- Ahomaki I, Pitkanen V, Soppi A, Saastamoinen L. Impact of a physician-targeted letter on opioid prescribing. J Health Econ 72:102344 evaluation · 2020 · DOI 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2020.102344 · PMID 32592925
- Impact of a Physician-Targeted Letter on Opioid Prescribing (Kela Info Tray) sponsor
Research notes
Clinician-facing campaign. Discovered 2026-10-22 (clinician-campaigns pass). Kela page returned 200 but is script-rendered; content confirmed through the PubMed abstract. The strong-opioid randomized follow-up is from a search snippet of the 2025 Jyvaskyla dissertation (Information interventions and physician prescribing behavior); not opened.
Record cases/fi-kela-codeine-letter.json, updated 2026-10-22· Link to this campaign